Four crew members were yesterday injured when a Sikorsky S-70C anti-submarine helicopter crashed at the Zuoying Naval Base (左營) in Kaohsiung, allegedly due to malfunctioning equipment.
The crew chief, a sergeant major surnamed Liu (劉), was injured the most severely, with second and third-degree burns on 90 to 95 percent of their body, the Ministry of National Defense Navy Headquarters Command said yesterday.
The helicopter was conducting trial flight maneuvers when it landed heavily on the runway and burst into flames, the ministry said.
Photo: CNA
A statement released late yesterday evening said that the helicopter was greatly damaged, and the pilot, a captain surnamed Cheng (鄭), and the copilot, a lieutenant colonel surnamed Chen (陳), sustained lacerations and bone fractures.
The fourth crew member, a sergeant major surnamed Kuo (郭), had second to third-degree burns on 10 percent of their body, but was conscious and in a stable condition, the ministry said.
The Medical Affairs Bureau said it has dispatched doctors from Taipei’s Tri-Service General Hospital to the hospital’s Zuoying branch to assist with treating the four.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
Local police sealed off a local residence, as its garage door had been penetrated by debris from the helicopter crash, and are currently investigating the incident, the report said.
The Navy Command Headquarters has grounded all S-70Cs and ordered that they all undergo flight safety inspections.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
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