Helicopter Crash In Empalme

Helicopter Crash In Empalme

On Thursday around 1 PM a helicopter crashed in Empalme, the next town south of us about 10 miles.

It was a Mi-17, model 1975 owned by the Mexican Air Force and has been in service with them since 1997. There were 9 people aboard and miraculously none were killed.

When it crashed it did not explode; but did take out a bunch of electrical lines. Some of the lines were connected to Conagua and because of this affected their pumps. Approximately 37 thousand people in Guaymas and Empalme were without water for some time until the lines were repaired.

They are saying that the crash was caused by a mechanical fault, apparently the helicopter had taken off about 20 minutes before it crashed. It crashed in a sports field, so luckily no one on the ground was injured as far as I know.

Photographs taken from the El Vigia newspaper.

More Carnaval Pictures

More Carnival Pictures

Here are a few more pictures of carnaval.

This was a cute float with all the childrens movie characters and props.

This shows how they lower the high parts of the floats to get under the electric lines. Notice the bent down part at the back. In the next photo it is standing straight up again. The pieces are hinged with metal bars connected to the top parts. When they get to the electric lines a couple of men walking behind the float grab the bars, lower the high part and walk along like that until they have cleared the lines. They then put everything back in place until the next set of lines.