Fatal REACH medical air crash stuns Santa Rosa-based company

The pilot of a twin-engine air ambulance plane that began filling with smoke before it crashed early Friday in the coastal hills north of McKinleyville in Humboldt County, killing him and three others aboard, was an experienced airman newly hired by a subsidiary of Santa Rosa-based REACH Air Medical Services, company officials said Sunday.

Larry Mills had more than 20 years of flying experience and had been a volunteer first responder for 12 years when in April he started flying for REACH’s Cal-Ore Life Flight based in Crescent City near the Oregon border, company officials said.

Mills and his crew - flight nurse Deborah Kroon and certified flight paramedic Michelle Tarwater - were aboard a Piper PA31T Cheyenne turboprop with a female patient when the plane crashed sometime after 1 a.m. Friday on private timberland about five miles north of the Arcata-Eureka Airport. They had been headed from Crescent City to Oakland International Airport.

The company did not identify the patient. The Humboldt County coroner couldn’t be reached Sunday.

Kroon, of Crescent City, was originally from New Zealand and a registered nurse, who worked for 25 years as a critical care nurse in hospitals across the United States, the company said in a statement. She started working with Cal-Ore in 2014.

Tarwater, who worked for the company since 2011, was among the first in the region to receive certification by the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians-Paramedics.

Mills was a father and also is survived by his wife, Trina, company officials said.

“It’s just such a difficult tragic time,” said Don Wharton, REACH director of business development, contacted by phone Sunday. “We will be working very closely and cooperating with authorities. This will be a process from which to learn what we can.”

REACH - which stands for Redwood Empire Air Care Helicopter - was founded in 1987 by a Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital emergency room doctor. The company operates 27 bases throughout California, Oregon and Texas. Wharton said they have been a pioneer air medical services and early adopters of developing safety standards, like night vision equipment and twin-engine planes.

Wharton defended the company’s safety record, saying it has always “met or exceeded all industry safety standards, requirements.”

The company’s only prior deadly crash occurred in 2003, Wharton said. In that incident, the helicopter crew of a pilot and two nurses were en route to pick up a gunshot victim at the California Department of Forestry’s Howard Forest station near Willits on Dec. 23, 2003 when the copter crashed into a ravine, killing all three.

National Transportation Safety Board Investigators said the pilot misjudged the weather and failed to use navigational instruments that might have helped him avoid clipping a tree.

On Friday, Mills, Kroon and Tarwater departed from Crescent City at about 12:30 a.m. with a female patient, heading to Oakland.

By 1 a.m., Mills reported the cockpit was filling with smoke, declaring an emergency. He said he would return to Crescent City.

The plane then disappeared from radar.

About 10 a.m., a Humboldt County sheriff’s search and rescue team found the wreckage in a quarter-mile debris field on private timberland in the Cranell area north of McKinleyville.

The National Transportation Safety Board investigators arrived at the site Saturday. A preliminary report is expected within two weeks.