According to information from the police, three people were killed in a helicopter crash in the north of Baden-Württemberg. The background to the accident is still unclear.
According to the police, the accident occurred shortly before 1 p.m. in a forest area between Steinbach and Stürzenhardt near Buchen (Neckar-Odenwald district). A spokesman could not say in the late afternoon whether people were still missing. Investigators would have to find out where the Robinson R44 helicopter started. Then there would probably also be indications of how many people were on board.
Crash area very large
“The debris field is huge,” said a local police spokesman. It extends over several hundred meters in the middle of the forest. He has not yet been able to provide any information about the identity of the dead. Numerous emergency services were at the scene of the accident. “The situation is extremely depressing,” said the police spokesman. The mayor of the city of Buchen, which has around 18,000 inhabitants, Roland Burger, also got an idea of the situation according to media reports. The background to the accident near the border with Hesse and Bavaria was still unclear on Sunday.
Helicopter accidents are rare
According to data from the Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation, helicopter accidents do not occur very often. For the past year it shows only four accidents with helicopters in civil aviation in Germany, none of them with seriously injured or fatalities. According to statistics, there were five helicopter accidents in 2019 with a total of three seriously injured.