'It’s been hard:' Island communities reeling after helicopter crash kills two

Three men were onboard the Hughes 500 helicopter when it went down at about 6:13 a.m. Tuesday: pilot Riley Browne and two Campbell River forestry engineers.

West Coast Helicopters general manager Sean Smyth was in his hangar at the company’s headquarters in Port McNeill on Tuesday morning, about to make his morning coffee, when his cellphone rang. On the other end of the line was West Coast Helicopters’ dispatch. One of the company’s helicopters had crashed in rugged terrain in the remote Loughborough Inlet area, between Knight Inlet and Bute Inlet, which is steep and heavily forested.

It was 6:20 a.m. and the crash had taken place just minutes earlier, at about 6:13 a.m. Three men were onboard the Hughes 500 helicopter when it went down: a pilot from West Coast Helicopters named Riley Browne and two forestry engineers from Campbell River-based Crowhurst Forest Management Group. Smyth was told that two of the people involved in the crash were unresponsive.

The survivor had radioed the information to the logging camp where the men were based, who then called dispatch. Smyth immediately jumped into action, rallying the company’s resources into a rescue effort. Browne was a close friend and employee, a pillar of the company who came up through their ranks over the past five years.

But Smyth didn’t really give himself time to reflect on that. “You got a job to do, and you gotta assume for the best, right? So, if you can get them out and get everybody to the hospital as soon as possible, the better it will be,” he said.

“I got off the phone immediately and was in the hangar, and there’s already crew here and I said: ‘Hey, we got to get one [helicopter] ready, with a stretcher.’ ” When something like this happens, it triggers the company’s emergency response plan, which means they dispatch their own crew to the area. In this case, their rescue team was sent from Campbell River and they partnered with the Technical Evacuation Advanced Aero Medical Society or TEAAM, who called them as soon as they heard about the crash, Smyth said.

A non-profit organization made up of paramedics and physicians who can provide advanced life support in remote conditions, TEAAM provides pre-hospital care in places where ambulances can’t go or take too long to access. By then, the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre out of Victoria had picked up news of the crash on their transmitter, and 442 Transport and Rescue Squadron launched a Cormorant helicopter and Kingfisher aircraft from 19 Wing Comox air force base. They all arrived at the crash site at the same time, Smyth said.

West Coast Helicopters’ crew and aircraft stood down while 442 Squadron performed the rescue. The pilot and one of the forestry engineers were dead. Paramedics from B.C. Emergency Health Services met the survivor at the Comox air force base, where they provided emergency medical treatment.

The survivor, who has not been named, was transported by air ambulance and was in serious but stable condition at Nanaimo Regional General Hospital on Wednesday. The two forestry engineers had been hired by Western Forest Products to survey and catalogue trees, terrain and vegetation in the area. >

See CRASH, A2 Crews from West Coast Helicopters and Crowhurst regularly work together on jobs like these, and are all close, said Smyth. “They’re all very tight-knit. We’ve worked together for a lot of years.

That pilot in particular was really tight-knit with the other crews. A lot of these guys, Campbell River, Port McNeill, they’re all very tight communities,” said Smyth. “Both the fatalities had big families.

Yeah, so it’s been hard on everybody.” Port McNeill resident Cory Miller, who has known Browne for 30 years, wrote a Facebook tribute to his friend. “Thank you for being who you were!

Always being there for everyone, especially me. Still a very hard pill to swallow and I don’t want to believe it.

30 years is a long time to know someone, but it wasn’t long enough. Just know we were all so proud of you.” Miller said the two were childhood best friends growing up in Woss, southwest of Port McNeill, and used to have joint birthday parties when they were young, since their birthdays were four days apart.

Smyth said Browne was a “local kid” who met up with one of their more senior pilots in 2021 to ask about flying helicopters and the industry. At the time, Browne had graduated from pilot school and was working in forestry. After the meeting, that pilot — who has since retired — called Smyth and told him he had hired a new pilot, Smyth recalled.

“I was like: ‘Well, that’s actually my job. And he goes: ‘No, no, no. I hired this guy.

You’re welcome.’ And, I thought, well, OK, how do you know he’s going to be any good? And he’s like: ‘I had coffee with him.

He’s going to be awesome.’ And you know, he was right.” Browne was skilled, had a good head for the job and was safety-conscious, said Smyth.

The circumstances of the crash are still unknown. Pilots are most at risk when taking off and landing, Smyth said, and the remote areas of B.C. are among the most challenging areas to work in when it comes to weather and rough terrain. “There’s so many variables that you can’t control.

And the whole key is just basically being aware of all the variables and trying to mitigate the risks as much as possible. And sometimes things come out and catch you off guard or bite you,” he said. In August of 2024, a pilot with West Coast Helicopters was killed when their Airbus AS350 B2 helicopter crashed into a ravine in Brooks Peninsula Provincial Park southwest of Port Alice.

A report on the crash by the Transportation Safety Board released in April of this year said poor visibility likely played a role, as there was cloud and fog in the area at the time. “With that one in ‘24, we’ll never fully understand some of the factors. This one, I’m hoping we’ll know more,” Smyth said.

“We live in a world where we have heavy consequences for things that happen and some things we control, some things we can’t control and we just manage that the best we can.” The Transportation Safety Board declined an interview. Its team arrived at the crash site Wednesday morning to begin the field phase of its investigation.