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Thursday, June 18, 2009
Mission Ran Out of Time
By Raam Wong And Phil Parker
Copyright © 2009 Albuquerque Journal
Andy Tingwall knew a storm was closing in and he had to "get the hell off" that mountain.
Instead he jumped out of his helicopter and went looking for lost hiker Megumi Yamamoto.
By the time the decorated State Police sergeant had carried the cold and weakened woman back to the helicopter, it was too late.
He tried to take off but crashed in zero visibility. Tingwall and Yamamoto died, and the spotter, officer Wesley Cox, was seriously injured.
Tingwall's final moments as a helicopter pilot and a husband are captured in audio recordings released Wednesday.
The tapes also include lost Yamamoto's increasingly distressed attempts to get help and an independent hiker's account of how she got lost.
Tingwall was communicating with his wife, who is a State Police dispatcher, throughout the rescue operation.
He used a pet name, "Mom," while his wife expressed fear for his safety.
"I don't know," Leighann Gonzales Tingwall said by phone as she spoke with Cox. "I'm getting worried. What's the weather doing now?"
Cox described the high winds and big clouds overhead.
"Oh my God," she said, her voice trailing off.
Hiker's report
Also on the recordings is a Tesuque man named Colin Keegan, who met Yamamoto's boyfriend, Paul Harrington, on Santa Fe Baldy after the couple had separated. Keegan told the dispatcher he was calling to check on the missing girl they'd reported earlier, because "we thought she might have fallen off a cliff or something."
Keegan told the dispatcher Harrington's account of how Yamamoto got lost: "He said they were 30 or 40 yards apart. He sought shelter behind a tree because it was windy up there. He saw her coming towards him, he looked in his backpack, he looked up again, and then never saw her again."
Harrington said in an interview this week that he and Yamamoto were about 100 yards apart when they became separated.
911 glitch
The recordings reveal the hurried and difficult hours leading up to the June 9 crash that took place after Tingwall picked up Yamamoto, who also died when the helicopter went down.
Yamamoto called 911 after becoming separated from her boyfriend late that afternoon. They had been camping at Lake Katherine near Santa Fe Baldy.
However, because of an apparent glitch in Santa Fe's 911 technology, her calls were repeatedly routed to a nonemergency administrative phone line at the Regional Emergency Communications Center.
Center personnel answering the phone took down Yamamoto's basic information, a task made difficult by the Japanese exchange student's accent. They then instructed her to call back and dial 911, not realizing that she had called the emergency number.
Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano said they did so because administration lines are not equipped to track the signal of her cell phone to get coordinates on her location.
More calls followed. The dispatchers repeatedly told the lost hiker she needed to call 911, while an increasingly distressed Yamamoto replied that she had.
"The dispatchers were frustrated because it had never happened before," the sheriff said. "The first few times they thought she wasn't calling 911."
A news report Tuesday night said it took 50 minutes before Yamamoto was connected to State Police, which coordinated the rescue.
But the 911 tapes released Wednesday indicate that by the fourth call, Yamamoto was being patched through to State Police.
Solano said Yamamoto's first call came about 4:40 p.m. and by 4:46 p.m., the decision had been made to transfer the call to State Police, triggering the search effort.
More confusion
Yet the confusion continued. Her voice growing weak, Yamamoto would get disconnected from State Police and redial 911, which again would ring the administrative line.
"How many people have you talked to before me?" one staffer at the center asked.
"Many people, but it always cuts me off," Yamamoto said.
In the background, someone from the center is heard saying, "I told her over and over to call 911."
Solano acknowledged that the personnel who initially took the calls "could have done a better job of explaining all that was happening" to Yamamoto.
More training might be needed in case the technology ever breaks down again, Solano said, adding: "We have to understand that technology is not always the answer."
"The important thing is that all the while Ms. Yamamoto was in constant communication with someone trying to get her location and assistance," the sheriff's office said in a statement.
Solano said the county has never had problems with its 911 technology like those Yamamoto encountered. The system is less than a year old.
Solano, who was speaking on behalf of the center's board of directors, said authorities have theories about how the mistake happened, but he wouldn't elaborate. Solano said the dispatch center was working with the state, the owners of the cell-phone towers and AT&T, Yamamoto's carrier, on the problem. The investigation could take several days, he said.
Opened in 2002, the center is run jointly by the city and county of Santa Fe. It receives the region's police, fire, medical and animal control calls and dispatches the appropriate agency.
Search intensifies
In the early hours of the search, Yamamoto stood in a small break in the trees waving her orange jacket and telling State Police dispatchers whenever she heard or saw the chopper buzzing close by.
She was unable to give the dispatchers much idea of her location because of the trees and overcast skies.
"Look down at your feet," the dispatcher said at one point. "Is the shadow to the right or the left of your feet?"
"I don't understand; what do you mean?" she asked. "I don't see any shadow."
As the helicopter landed on a hilltop about a mile away, Yamamoto said she didn't think she was still able to hike to meet it.
"I don't think so," she told dispatchers. "I'm really cold. I see the helicopter, but I can't walk for long."
Meanwhile, Sgt. Tingwall had landed the aircraft and was telling his wife he'd go hunt for Yamamoto.
"Well, I'm gonna walk down the hill here a little," Tingwall told her. "But if it starts snowing, I'm gonna have to get the hell out of here."
"If you talk to her, tell her to start blowing her whistles," Tingwall told his wife, before turning to his partner: "Wes, if it gets cold, just make a (expletive) fire up here. Tell her to start blowing her whistle and I'll find her. It's right off this hill here, I think."
"Be safe"
A bit later, another official got on the phone with Leighann Tingwall: "Tell Andy to be safe and we can go get her just as well. It may be cold, and it'll be a little longer, but we don't want him to get into trouble. I've talked to the Forest Service and told them he was landing and it's a life-or-death situation."
Leighann Tingwall then called Cox from dispatch to say they shouldn't spend too much time on the mountain, because ground teams could get to Yamamoto.
More communications followed. As Yamamoto blew a whistle, Sgt. Tingwall trudged on through the worsening weather.
"It's very bad," she told dispatchers. "I can't see anything, but I hear yelling."
Minutes later, Cox called authorities back in Santa Fe to report that Tingwall had arrived back at the chopper, carrying an exhausted Yamamoto on his back.
"Oh, did he have to carry her?" a sergeant on the phone with Cox asked, laughing. "Tell him he's just trying to get another medal of valor."
Cox responded: "Tell Leighann he's back and we'll give you guys a call here in a minute."
That call apparently never came.
Authorities believe the chopper was taking off in zero visibility and its tail rotor hit a tree, causing the crash.
The final transmission carried the tragic news.
"Hey, they just hit the mountainside," a female dispatcher says.
"Who hit the mountainside?" a male voice asks.
"Andy," the woman responds. "I gotta take over for Leighann."
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