Local firefighter Bill Baxter, 50, of Redwood Valley, on Tuesday was listed in serious condition at Mercy Medical Center in Redding after a helicopter crash Monday afternoon left him with a broken femur.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection captain is employed at Howard Forest in Willits, but like several other local firefighters had recently been dispatched to the Straylor Fire in Lassen County.
Baxter was one of two passengers in the helicopter owned by Aris Helicopter in San Jose and under contract with CDF-Fire, according to Jeff Fontana, information officer with the Interagency Fire Center -- which dispatches for various state and federal agencies.
Rich Samson, a CDF-firefighter from the Santa Cruz unit, was the other passenger; he was reportedly uninjured. The name of the pilot, who sustained back injuries, has not been released. He, too, was taken to Mercy Medical Center.
The crash occurred at around 2:30 p.m. while the trio was overhead mapping the fire -- to determine its size and behavior. The Bell 206 Jet Ranger Helicopter apparently went down within the fire's perimeter.
Unconfirmed eyewitness accounts reported the helicopter crashed close to the fire. A CDF-Fire crew and another helicopter were reportedly close enough to rescue the group and leave the area before the crashed helicopter was consumed in the fire.
The cause of the fire has not yet been determined, Fontana said.
"CDF has a serious accident review team on site," he said, noting there are representatives from several agencies on that team, including the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.
"The helicopter went down; we don't know whether it was a mechanical malfunction or something else. That accident review team will make that determination," Fontana said.
It was one of about 12 helicopters working on the Straylor fire, he noted.
About 26 local CDF-Firefighters have been dispatched to Lassen County, and about a dozen others to Siskiyou County, where thousands of acres are ablaze.
Many of these fires were caused by lightning storms.
