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Investigators are combing through what's left of a helicopter that crashed near Price Saturday. Three people on board that helicopter were killed.
Investigators are not releasing a lot of new information. We've been calling both the Carbon County Sheriff's Office and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), but still no word or even speculation on a cause.
What we do know is the helicopter took off from the Carbon County Airport, heading toward Salt Lake. But it only made it about a half-mile northwest of the airport.
"All I could see was smoke, and it was thick and black. When I first was called out it was ... it did look like it was in my construction. Protocol is to run up and see and call, and that's what I did," Ana Ghariani said.
Ghariani was working at the local landfill when she made the call that would alert the sheriff's office of what had happened. When she went to get a closer look, she ran into a man who was dumping some trash at her site who saw what happened. She immediately let him talk to dispatchers.
"He seen two choppers leave; one headed west, one headed north. He watched the one headed north. He looked down to untie his load, and he said when he looked right back up it was over with, it was done. So, we let dispatch know, and it went from there," Ghariani said.
That call was made around 3:42 p.m., and sheriff's deputies arrived at the crash site 10 minutes later.
"When I arrived on scene, what you see right now is what it was. There was no surrounding brush that was involved with the fire. It was a pretty quick flash, and it didn't involve any of the surrounding area," said Carbon County Sheriff James Cordova said.
But by that time the pilot, 59-year-old James Ian Innes from Salt Lake, his son, 30-year-old Andrew Innes of Park City, and their friend, George McDaniel from Idaho Falls, were already dead. They were supposed to be on their way home from a fishing trip.
Carbon County sheriff's deputies say the helicopter took off from a fuel stop at Carbon County Airport, heading south. Then they made the turn to head north and crashed a half-mile northwest of the airport.
Now the both the sheriff's office and the NTSB are documenting equipment and wreckage, checking weather conditions and looking into the possibility of human error.
"Once we're done with that, we will recover the wreckage, and we will take it to another location where we may further investigate it, whether it's investigating the engine, so on and so forth," said Patrick Jones, with the NTSB.
The sheriff's office and the NTSB both will be on site investigating for a couple of more days. The NTSB says a preliminary report will be released in five to six days.
E-mail: ngonzales@ksl.com
