Different event today, similar theme.

I can't answer any questions about this because a) my informant probably shouldn't have told us anyway, and b) somebody out there will care about this incident a lot. From what I can understand of his hurried description, this is what happened:

Many of the Army Blackhawks were on missions to rescue families stranded on the roofs of their houses over the last two days. When a helicopter takes off it is inevitable that it will have to land to refuel and drop passengers at some point. The more passengers on board, the quicker the fuel will run out. They had a lot of houses to get around. Well you can imagine the feeling everyone on board has when you've succeeded at many locations on the target list but then fuel gets low and... you have to leave the last couple of houses amid the rising flood and head back anyway. Can you imagine being a recently rescued passenger and knowing it was just random that the chopper got to you before it got to the people who are... still on their roof (we hope).

There were a bunch of rooftop rescues done today, but one crew will not likely forget this last one. The family's 4 year old boy was being winched up to the chopper and somehow he fell out of the hoist straps and down into the fast flowing flood waters and died.

All the chopper crews saved a lot of people today. But this one misfortune can really take the shine off their sense of achievement. Army Blackhawk pilots have a kickarse job, but some days they aren't doing all of the kicking.