Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 6, 1993 TAG: 9304060033
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Greg Edwards
DATELINE: I COULD SEE AN INEXPLICABLE LENGTH: Long
CHOPPER HOPPER FEARS TREND
if somewhat disturbing - trend developing here at this fish wrapper I work for. It went like this: Have a natural disaster; send Greg on a helicopter ride.In November 1985, Roanoke and much of Western Virginia was swamped by the "flood of the century." My bosses sent me on a helicopter ride.
In March 1993, Roanoke and much of Western Virginia (actually almost the entire East Coast) was smothered by the "snow storm of the century." My bosses sent me on a helicopter ride.
Are they trying to get rid of me or what?
It may be stretching things to say that two occurrences make a trend, but your basic natural disasters don't come along that often.
Now, helicopter rides can be great fun. But for me to feel comfortable on any kind of aircraft takes a good deal of psychic gymnastics.
And a lot of whisky.
The man with the fire extinguisher didn't do anything to help my enthusiasm for flying.
That was the man back in 1985 when I went flying all over the 6th Congressional District with Rep. Jim Olin of Roanoke to survey the flood damage.
I met the congressman early one bright sunny morning following the big flood at the little town of Elkton in Rockingham County, where his tour was to begin.
There we boarded one of those big green Huey helicopters belonging to the Virginia National Guard. The chopper had two pilots, both warrant officers, I believe; an officer, who was playing host to Olin; and a sergeant, who was the crew chief.
The sergeant's only function, so far as I could tell, was to stand outside the helicopter with a fire extinguisher at the ready and watch the big engine every time the pilots cranked it up to take off. We took off a lot that day, but I never quite got used to the sergeant's little ritual.
The Huey is the kind of helicopter you may have ridden in in Vietnam or have seen in war movies like Platoon. Their rotor blades sometimes strike the air with a big thump that shakes the helicopter and sounds like someone snapping a very big towel in a locker room.
It has a big door on each side of its mid-section and a bench-like seat on either side facing the door. Sometimes we flew with the door open, which provided quite a thrill, even with a seat belt on, when we banked to turn.
Last month's chopper ride on the Monday after the blizzard was like swapping a Jeep for a Cadillac.
Photographer Keith Graham and I flew in a Bell Jet Ranger to Bland, where hundreds of motorists had taken shelter after being stranded on Interstate 77.
The helicopter belonged to Summit Helicopters of Daleville, which does a lot of work for Appalachian Power Co. and the Forest Service and only takes news persons riding when there's nothing else going on.
The pilot's name was Jim. He was a nice guy, a seasoned pilot and one of the company's owners. The helicopter was a five seater that clipped along at 120 mph.
We stopped at the Virginia Tech Airport, where a small patch of runway had been cleared, to pick up a cameraman for WSLS-TV. This three-hour trip was costing the newspaper more than I paid the hospital to deliver two babies. So management didn't see anything wrong in sharing the expense with the competition.
We flew from there to Bland at about 5,000 feet. The view was incredible. You don't get many days since air pollution was invented when you can see up to 20 miles or more.
Outside at that altitude, according to a thermometer on the instrument panel, the air temperature was a minus 9 degrees Fahrenheit. The TV guy next to me kept opening his window to videotape the landscape and I started hoping his camera would jam. Still, the cabin was comfortable except for the cold floor against by boot soles.
Just north of the Big Walker Mountain tunnel a tractor trailer had jackknifed. Traffic was backed up for miles. The photographers wanted pictures. Bland could wait. We turned and headed back toward the mountain, banked around the accident scene and then turned back toward the mountain and banked around again.
If you think you have a lot of respect for a mountain when your on the ground, wait until you look one square in the crest from several thousand feet in the air.
Most of the stranded motorists had already left Bland High School. They were back on the highway stuck behind jackknifed trucks.
After a short stop at the school, we headed south toward Wytheville where traffic on I-81, too, had come to a dead stop because of accidents. Somewhere down there another of this newspapers photographers had run into the traffic jam trying to get to Bland and had to give it up.
The flight back up I-81 to Blacksburg and the Roanoke Valley was spectacular. Claytor Lake stood out like a dark wound on the white landscape, a thin glaze of ice coating many of its coves. Down below on the pasture land, the wind had blown the snow from the hilltops, uncovering brown grass. From above, the Angus cattle grazing below looked like poppy seeds on a pan of iced buns.
On the way to the heliport at Cloverdale, we passed over the Roanoke Times & World-News bureau in Christiansburg where I work and my home in Roanoke County. The weather stayed kind to us and as I was raking in the mountain-ringed view over the Roanoke Valley, I thought: A few more natural disasters and I could get fond of these helicopters.
Greg Edwards is a reporter in the Roanoke Times & World-News' New River Valley bureau.