POMPANO BEACH, FLA. (WSVN) - Weeks after he crawled to safety, a South Florida paramedic described the moments when the helicopter he was on fell from the sky and crashed into an apartment complex, killing two people.
On Aug. 28, a Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue helicopter caught fire, lost control and plummeted into a Pompano Beach apartment building, killing a BSFR Battalion Chief and a woman who lived at the complex.
Mikael Chaguaceda shared his remarkable survival story with 7News on Friday. He revealed some of the thoughts that went racing through his mind as he spun over and over inside the chopper.
“‘How am I going to die at 31 years old, going to save a life?'” he said.
Chaguaceda said he was taking off from Pompano Beach Airpark to respond to a call of a child in distress when he and his crew heard a large explosion.
“We’d never, ever heard anything like that, so we knew it was catastrophic,” he said.
The 31-year-old said he smelled smoke on board the chopper.
“The smell of fire, of course, but it smelled electrical to me,” he said.
The helicopters they were on had been replaced weeks before by a Louisiana-based company.
After smelling the smoke, Chaguaceda said, they immediately attempted to turn back.
“We heard a second boom. Once we heard that second boom sound, tail rotor immediately snapped off,” he said. “I myself never lost consciousness, and right before the tail rotor came off, my captain, Terryson Jackson, looked at me dead in the eye and told me, ‘Don’t worry, Mikey, we’re going to be good.’ He told me that.”
Chaguaceda said the spinning became uncontrollable.
“Even though the spins must have been a couple of seconds, they felt like minutes,” he said. “Every single thought I had was my son, my family, how is this going to be explained to my son?”
The helicopter slammed into an apartment building,
“Once we made impact in this building, I was disoriented, of course, from, you know, just the circles that we took, I had to remind myself that I was alive,” Chaguaceda said. “Inside the cabin, we were full of heavy smoke, I couldn’t even see my hand. I didn’t know where up from down was. I yelled to see what’s going on, see if anybody’s alive; I didn’t hear a single thing. How we didn’t explode instantly, I don’t know.”
He continued to recount what he experienced as the helicopter crashed.
“We landed nose first into this dwelling, which is why my captain died on impact. He took all the blunt trauma,” he said.
Chaguaceda then described how he was able to survive the crash.
“The only reason why I was able to get out and the pilot was because probably 30% of the aircraft, if that was exposed past the roof before the first initial explosion,” he said. “I tried to get out, and if you could use your imagination, I was basically slumped downwards because the helicopter came into a left position, so I’m kind of upside down, so I had to unlatch my seat belt.”
He detailed the pain he was in after he unlatched his seatbelt.
“I’m in the craziest pain of my life. I got the wind knocked out of me so I could barely even breathe, and on top of that, I’m like, ‘I’m about to burn alive,'” he said. “As crazy as it sounds, I was able to brush fire off my right arm due to my flight suit only, it was brand new. I only used it for like two shifts, and it has a fire retardant on it, which is why I have no burns on me right now.”
Chaguaceda realized he had to exit the aircraft as quickly as possible.
“‘I’ve got to get out of here before this explodes again. God knows what happend from there,'” he said. “I punched right through the window, the window popped out.”
Chaguaceda jumped onto the roof of the apartment complex and was able to crawl away from any danger. He said a man who was working nearby propped up a ladder against the building so that he and the pilot could climb down.
“Probably within three or four seconds from me getting to safety, the first explosion occurs,” he said.
Lurean Wheaton, who lived in one of the apartment units, was killed along with Jackson.
Chaguaceda said the air conditioning unit on the chopper had been recently replaced, and now he is filing a lawsuit against the repair company out of Louisiana.
“There’s a lot of unanswered questions, and I think we all know, based on your faith, that I’m only here by the grace of God. There’s no other way to put it,” he said.
Although Chaguaceda didn’t suffer any burns, he suffered some injuries to his ribs, as well as some orthopedic injuries.
The National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the crash is ongoing.
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