Family of Helicopter Pilot Killed in California Wildfire Reaches $15 Million Settlement

LOS ANGELES — A helicopter pilot died in 2020 when his plane crashed while he was fighting a wildfire in Southern California. His family has reached a $15 million deal with the company that took care of the plane, their lawyers said Friday.

On August 19, 2020, Michael Fournier was giving out water over rough, hilly terrain when his bright red Bell UH-1H crashed into a hillside. He was helping to fight the Hills Fire, which was 10 miles (16 km) south of the small town of Coalinga in the Central Valley.

Fournier worked for a private company in Southern California that does work for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) and other groups to provide services like rescue planes and more.

“The lawsuit brought answers and responsibility to the Fournier family, and this outcome does just that,” said Andrew Robb, one of the lawyers who brought the lawsuit. Robb said that the family wouldn’t say anything in public.

This is what the National Transportation Safety Board found: “a hydraulic system failure” caused the chopper to crash.

Robb said that just before the crash, Fournier told air traffic control that he was having trouble with the hydraulics of the chopper.

Guard Helicopters, based in Fillmore, California, hired Fournier to work for them. At the time, Cal Fire had hired them to provide emergency services. Rotorcraft Support, Inc., the company that took care of the chopper, paid the settlement. Friday, a phone message left with the helicopter maintenance business was not answered right away.

An FCI search and rescue team had to travel for almost four hours to get to the area where Fournier’s helicopter had crashed because it was so far away, hilly, and full of smoke.

Fourteen team members in five Jeeps drove for miles through soft dirt and thick smoke until they had to leave their cars and walk the last few hundred yards to the crash site. There, the body was carefully wrapped in an American flag and taken to one of the cars.

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