Bushfires: Fallen US hero ‘lightened the mood of any room’
Hero pilot Rick DeMorgan Jnr would ‘lighten the mood of any room he walked into’, a friend has said.
Just minutes before American flight engineer Rick DeMorgan Jr took off on his final firefighting mission, he sent a friend a video of himself driving on “the wrong side of the road”, the soundtrack of Crocodile Dundee blasting in the background.
“For anyone wondering, Rick was amped for this job,” his friend Jeremy Whitley posted online on Friday.
“I talked with him yesterday … and in his own words, ‘it was crazy’.
“He was a bull in a China shop that lightened the mood of any room he walked into. He is missed. His loss hurts.”
Mr DeMorgan, a 43-year-old father of two, was one of three hero American firefighters who died after their C-130 Hercules suddenly lost contact with ground crews at 1.45pm on Thursday.
The crew had been water bombing two out-of-control bushfires in the Snowy Mountains, carrying 15,000 litres of water and fire retardant.
Battling the searing heat and turbulent winds just several hundred feet above the ground, there was no room for error.
Shocked onlookers saw the plane suddenly fall from the sky, erupting into a massive fireball on impact, with wreckage strewn across 1km at Peak View near Cooma.
The bodies of the three victims were recovered on Friday, before their families arrive in Sydney on the weekend.
Police were working with Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigators to determine the cause of the crash. ATSB chief commissioner Greg Hood confirmed the tanker crashed almost immediately after releasing a line of retardant, killing all on board.
Seven transport safety investigators had been deployed to the crash site, which was “particularly complicated” given it was in an active bushfire area.
“We understand that aircraft is equipped with a cockpit voice recorder, so we’ll be looking for that very early in the investigation to see what exchanges may’ve been made in the cockpit in those final moments,” Commissioner Hood said.
Canada-based Coulson Aviation, which chartered the aircraft, said the three men were “fallen heroes ... Our hearts are with the crew’s family and friends and our Coulson family suffering the loss of these three remarkable and well-respected crew members,” a company statement said.
Mr DeMorgan, a flight engineer with 18 years’ flying experience in the US Air Force, including in combat conditions, was “passionate about flying and his children”.
In another post on Mr DeMorgan’s Facebook page, a friend wrote of how “excited” he had been to join the firefighting effort in Australia and how “he was lost doing what he loved”.
Tributes also flowed for Mr DeMorgan’s two colleagues, Captain Ian H. McBeth, 44, a veteran pilot, and first officer Paul Clyde Hudson, 42, who served 20 years in the US Marine Corps.
On the Facebook page of Mr McBeth’s wife, Bowdie, there were happy family snaps of the pilot with his wife and three young children, the last of them taken on December 19.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING: ANGELICA SNOWDEN
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