Caretaker pulls pilot from fuel-soaked helicopter

A SCHOOL caretaker was the hero of the day when he risked his own safety to rescue a helicopter pilot following a crash in Co Meath.

Quick-thinking Brian Emmett ran to the scene of the crash and helped the shocked pilot away from the fuel-soaked wreckage before it exploded into a fireball.

“He seemed to be alright, he was walking,” said Mr Emmett.

“He told me there was no one on board but that there was fuel everywhere.”

Three people, the Co Kildare pilot and two passers-by, were injured, none seriously, when the helicopter crashed at 4.30pm adjacent to an hotel premises which is being used as a temporary school at Bettystown.

Eighty pupils and staff of Coláiste na hInse had fortunately left the area not long before the accident happened.

Mr Emmett also rushed to help a female motorist parked about 20 feet away from the wreckage.

“She had blood on her and I told her to get out of the car because there was fuel lashing out,” he said.

Mr Emmett said he heard the crash while he was locking up the school shortly after 4.30pm.

“I was inside the school and I could hear things hitting the building,” he said.

“I thought the helicopter had flown too close to the school and had blown rubbish around but then I heard a crash.

“I ran out and saw the helicopter at the far end of the car park on the roadside. There was smoke coming from it.”

The helicopter wreckage blew up in a series of explosions.

Debris was scattered for hundreds of yards smashing nearby windows.

Cllr Patrick Boshell, who runs a supermarket in Bettystown, said gardaí sealed off the centre of the village very quickly after the crash.

“It is all cordoned off. Nobody is being allowed in or out,” he said.

Three units of the Drogheda Fire Brigade eventually brought the blaze under control.

The occupant of a nearby apartment said he ran terrified from the building when the windows came crashing in.

“Debris landed in the street, it broke windows in nearby apartment blocks and shops and in several cars parked in the village. It’s a miracle nobody was killed,” he said.

Another local resident of a nearby apartment had a lucky escape when a piece of the chopper’s rotor smashed through a window and landed at his feet.

The helicopter had dropped off its two male passengers on Bettystown beach before it got into difficulties.

One of the passengers, Seamus Belton, said he and his companion were very relieved to have avoided certain disaster. He said he was glad the pilot, while very shocked, had not been seriously injured.

“It looked as if he was trying to find somewhere to land and he may have decided on the car park of the former hotel,” an eyewitness said.

Air accident investigation unit inspector, Jurgen Whyte, said yesterday: “The accident involved a large Sikorskey S76 twin-engined helicopter. It crash-landed at the Neptune Hotel and caught fire. One person was on board and two people on the ground were injured by flying debris. Our investigation team now will try and establish why this aircraft came down.”

Meath VEC chief executive Peter Kearns said that luckily all pupils and staff had left the Neptune Hotel temporary school grounds before the crash occurred.

“There could easily have been students and teachers still on the school grounds at that time. Our school caretaker, Brian Emmet, was very shaken up but what he did was very brave. We hope that the pilot will be alright and we are very grateful that there were apparently only slight injuries resulting from the crash.”

The injured were taken to Our lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, where they received treatment for minor injuries.

This was the second air crash in Co Meath in a month.

On August 20 a couple walked away from their downed single-engined aircraft after it crash-landed in a barley field shortly after takeoff from Trim aerodrome.