© 1997 Kelly Andersson

On August 1, 1997, a PBY-5A Canso water scooper on the Laurel Fire broke up on San Vicente Lake south of Ramona, California. Pilot John Wells and his copilot Mark Cooper are both recovering from severe injuries. Wells's plane, a consolidated PBY manufactured in 1944 and converted and rebuilt in the 1970s, is totalled. John Wells and his wife Laura have owned and operated Airborne Fire Attack in Orange County, California, for two years. They supplied call-when-needed air tankers -- a 1000-gallon PBY and a leased Super Catalina with 1,500-gallon capacity -- for fighting fires in Southern California. "July was a quiet month for brush fires due to the monsoonal flow and high humidity in California," says Wells. "We didn't do much flying, and during the last part of the month we did maintenance and waxed the plane." Wells probably wishes he was out waxing his plane now, but both he and the PBY are broken. On August 1 at 1:30 p.m. he and his co-pilot Mark Cooper, a captain with the Long Beach Fire Department, were dispatched to a fire near Lake Wohlford, on the CDF Monte Vista Ranger Unit in San Diego County. They arrived about 20 minutes later, and found four other air tankers and three helicopters on the fire. They were assigned a flank, and they scooped from the lake -- about a half mile from the fire -- and made two drops. Their turnaround time was about two minutes. During their third run, according to Wells, they were skimming down the lake, and the air attack officer advised them that they were being diverted to the Laurel Fire, about seven miles south of Ramona, along with one of the CDF S-2s and one helicopter. "We came off Lake Wohlford with a full load and turned south toward the new fire," says Wells. "There were no ground resources on the scene yet; we arrived about the same time as the first engine company and the battalion chief. Tanker 75 was there, and a San Diego County helicopter. There was a structure threatened, and we made a drop to cut off the head of the fire at the house. We used a lot of Class A foam. San Vicente Lake was about a half mile away, and our designated scooping lake. We had scooped in this lake for another fire on July 3. When we set up on final to scoop a new load, we were notified by our company dispatch that the lake had been cleared." Airborne Fire Attack has their own dispatch, with a company radio. The designated scooping spots are worked out in advance with lake management. Many of the lakes in the region receive heavy recreational use, and signs are set up to notify boaters and swimmers of designated scooping areas, and to instruct them on lake-clearing procedures when a tanker is dispatched to a fire. The PBY requires about 1400 feet of scooping distance, and the lake is considerably longer than that. "We got the clearance to scoop and touched down in our designated scooping spot," says Wells. We starting scooping, and when we powered back up we heard a loud bang. And then, in just the blink of an eye, the aircraft broke apart." The PBY had broken nearly in half, and water charged through the cockpit at touchdown speed of about 75 mph. The nose and cockpit had broken off and slammed into the left wing as the plane flipped over, and the tangle of plane containing Wells and Cooper was about 20 feet under the surface, beneath the mess of what was left of the plane. "All I remember is my face and my body impacting the water like I'd fallen down waterskiing. I remember tumbling, and water slamming me around like I was in a washing machine. The whole time I was tumbling, I was afraid to close my eyes, because I didn't want to lose consciousness. "After the plane came to a rest, I couldn't see anything. I still had no idea where I was. I panicked, and tried to fight my way out of my seat. After taking a big deep breath of water, I thought, well, this is not where I want to die. "It was then that I stopped and evaluated and got myself together. My right arm was badly broken at the shoulder, the propeller had scalped me on the head, and my left hand was pinned tight in the wreckage. I ripped my hand loose and tore it pretty badly, but I got it free and got my seat belt undone. Then I started to work my way out of the wreckage. I knew I was quite a ways down below the surface, because it was completely dark and I couldn't see anything. The water was dirty and stirred up from the bottom, and once I got loose, I didn't know where to go. Then I remembered a trick from a CDF survival class -- I blew some bubbles and followed them up to the surface. When I got up there, I had to work my way through the wires and wreckage, and I came out holding on to the right engine." Wells, badly injured and disoriented, hung on to the engine and looked for his copilot. There was no sign of Cooper. "I remembered, as the water was rushing in," says Wells, "what I thought was him getting blown backwards by the bulkhead. It was like the cockpit exploded in slow motion. But he didn't go backwards -- what actually happened was that my section was broken off and thrown up into the nose baggage compartment. When I came up, I had one good arm and was holding on, and I couldn't see Mark and was screaming for him. This was the worst part of the whole thing. I couldn't find him anywhere -- I would yell and didn't hear him. I was hearing a banging noise somewhere, like he was trying to kick his way out, and I assumed he was trapped down below in the wreckage somewhere. So I tried to go back down to look for him. When I swam down, though, I realized that I was fully clothed and in a flight suit and with a broken shoulder and a severed hand, and I couldn't do anything at all. All I could do was wait." Wells hung on for a few minutes till the lifeguards came on the scene. They had been out clearing the lake and telling boaters to move out of the way when the PBY nosedived into a twisted mass of metal and cable and wires. The wreckage had drifted in near to the steep shore, and the lifeguards kicked it into high gear. Cooper, meanwhile, had worked his way through the tangle to one of the wingtips. He thought he could swim to shore, but found he was as badly beat up as Wells. The lifeguards fished him out with rescue gear and took him ashore. "They came back and got me," says Wells, "and we took about a 15-minute boat ride Code 3 back to the ramp. That was a long ride." Because Wells is a paramedic, he could tell from watching them work on his copilot that he wasn't doing very well. He and Cooper were both stuffed into a LifeFlight helicopter and flown to Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego. They talked, side by side, on stretchers on the flight. John Wells is a firefighter paramedic with the San Marino Fire Department in Los Angeles County. His wife Laura is a 9-1-1 dispatcher with the Long Beach Fire Department. Wells has over 7000 hours in a seaplane, with 8000 landings on water. He has contracted with CDF and has flown on 55 fires and dropped about 375,000 gallons with his PBY in the last couple years. The company plans to replace the aircraft to continue to provide for California a cost-effective aerial fire-fighting resource. Cooper, a captain with the Long Beach Fire Department, is also a seaplane pilot, and the two have flown seaplanes together for many years. Both were interagency approved with initial attack cards through CDF and the U.S. Forest Service. Cooper's left hand was mangled and partially amputated, and will require more surgery and extensive hand rehab to get back to work. Wells has completed shoulder and hand surgery and plans to return to work after four or five months of therapy. "Both of us will be out for quite a while," says Wells. NOTE: This story is © 1997 Kelly Andersson and may not be reproduced or distributed without written permission. For information on reprint rights email Kelly Andersson. [ HOME ] [ ARTICLES ] [ CLASSIFIEDS ] [ LINKS ] [ JOBS ] [ ADVERTISING ]