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Copter Crash Kills 8 in Louisiana

05 January 2009 09:07 (UTC +04:00)

Louisiana-APA. Eight people were killed and another injured Sunday when a helicopter ferrying oilfield workers to a job site went down in a marshy area of southeast Louisiana wilderness, APA reports
The operator of the helicopter, owned by Petroleum Helicopters Inc., based in Lafayette, La., broadcast a distress signal at 3 p.m. The United States Air Force Rescue Coordination Center in Virginia picked up the signal and alerted the Coast Guard station in New Orleans.
All eight bodies were recovered at or near the crash scene. The site is about a hundred miles southwest of New Orleans in a marsh crossed by canals, bayous and several tidal lakes and can be reached only by airboat.
The cause of the crash is still under investigation.
The survivor was taken by a Coast Guard helicopter to a hospital in Houma in critical condition and was expected to be transferred to a hospital in New Orleans.