plane crash and rescue

Sometimes you assist to an exceptional event, and this is what happened to me. Here is the story...

August 19th, 2016, 4pm. While hiking in France's mountain, near Ceillac (44.647408, 6.894937), four small planes coming from Spain passes by and, let it put it this way, tries to have some fun in the valley.

Eventually one of them flies too low, touches the rocky ground and crashes.

Other hikers in the vicinity goes to the wreck to rescue the pilot.

Less than an hour later, a rescue helicopter comes and drops 3 guys with first-aid hardware.

The pilot has only a few scratches, but his wife is heavily wounded.

The helicopter stands by on a flat spot until the woman is ready for transportation.



When the body is ready for a lift, the helicopter takes off.




Final approach. The helicopter is not very stable, the pilot makes a lot of effort to keep the winch right over the stretcher.

 

Once hooked, it flies quickly away off the ground and rewinds the winch.

 That's not finished. The helicopter turns around to pick up the pilot and the rescue team.

 The helicopter can not land on non-flat area. It leans only the edge of a skid while the men come aboard.

It's too high and the helicopter is overloaded. The wind is low, but coming from the rear. It has clearly troubles to take off.

After a quick swirling, it eventually gets airborne for true and flies to Briançon's hospital. Congratulation to the helicopter pilot, that was very impressive...

It remains the wreckage...