Flags are at half-staff at the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.
As the agency mourns Monday's fatal crash of its air rescue helicopter, Sheriff Gregory Tony says it’s time for action. He said he met with the county’s mayor and assistant administrator Tuesday, and was assured the county would provide funding for two new helicopters.
“With tragedy, there’s an opportunity, we can get this right or we can just wait for the next tragedy to take place," Tony said in a late afternoon news conference. "The investigation is still in its inquiry phases with the NTSB but we all know just from monitoring the nature of the crash it was a mechanical issue, a fire."
It’s what the sheriff feared, and what he warned the county commission about in a budget workshop meeting last June.
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“Fire rescue helicopter that we’re utilizing has been around since 1999, we’ve been piece-mealing parts for years to maintain the flight capability,” Tony said at that meeting.
“Listening back to my statements from June,” the sheriff said Tuesday, “You probably heard more of an awareness tone of, 'hey, we need to get this done,' because eventually the aircraft are not gonna be capable of flying and the risk factor of one falling out of the sky was too great, and now it’s happened.”
Broward County Mayor Lamar Fisher said the county recognizes the problem.
“But we’re already working with the sheriff obviously to get that unit replaced, and working on a long-term plan for the air fleet as well,” Fisher said, before I asked him if it’s too soon to say that new helicopters should’ve been purchased long ago.
“You really can’t say, again, let the federal investigation see exactly what happened, and then we can make a determination what to do,” Fisher responded.
I asked the sheriff the same question.
“The answer is yes, but this is the result of not just one administration, whether it be BSO or the county, this is how things have operated in government here for too long, in that tragedy strikes then we respond, we can’t keep taking this risk factor with human lives,” Tony said.
Buying a new law enforcement or air rescue helicopter is not a simple process. As the sheriff explained, it usually takes about two years from the time one of those sophisticated flying machines is ordered to when it’s delivered.
But Tony said the president of Airbus, which makes the helicopters, has offered BSO two nearly ready-to-go aircraft, available because another agency backed out of a purchase. Those are the two helicopters the county has committed to obtaining, Tony hopes, as soon as possible.
