Laser hits Washington helicopter — and the Coast Guard wants to know who did it
The U.S. Coast Guard is asking the public to help figure out who struck a military helicopter with a laser in northwest Washington last week, putting the aircraft’s flight crew in danger.
The Port Angeles-based crew was flying an MH-65 Dolphin helicopter on a mission Friday northwest of Bremerton — a town across Puget Sound from Seattle — when someone pointed a red laser at the aircraft indirectly for about a second shortly before 10:30 p.m., Coast Guard officials said Monday in a news release.
The Coast Guard said the crew “were checked out by the duty corpsman, who medically cleared the crew to resume duty.”
Officials said the laser light appeared to come from near the southwest corner of Naval Base Kitsap in Bangor. The helicopter crew reported the strike to the Federal Aviation Administration, local police and Coast Guard Air Station Port Angeles.
“These types of incidents can be very dangerous to the safety of our aircrews and disrupts our ability to respond as a search and rescue asset,” Cmdr. Scott Jackson of Coast Guard Air Station Port Angeles said in a statement. “We need the public to understand the dangers of playing with laser lights goes beyond medical risks to our aircrews. It places all mariners at risk due to delayed response times should they become in distress.”
Jackson added that “in this particular case, the aircrew was deemed fit to continue flying,” but said that “we have had instances where our crews have been medically grounded.”
What are the dangers of pointing lasers at plane or helicopter crews?
According to the FAA, “high-powered lasers can completely incapacitate pilots who are trying to fly safely to their destinations and may be carrying hundreds of passengers.”
Lasers can cause “glare, afterimage, flash blindness, or temporary loss of night vision” in flight crews, according to the Coast Guard — and “if a laser is shined in the eyes of an aircrew member, Coast Guard flight rules dictate that the aircraft must abort its mission.”
Pointing a laser at an aircraft isn’t just dangerous: It’s also a felony under federal law, according to the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard cites a section of the criminal code as saying that “whoever knowingly aims the beam of a laser pointer at an aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States, or at the flight path of such an aircraft, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.”
Special agents are investigating the Friday laser strike, with the Coast Guard saying “anyone with information about the case is encouraged to contact investigators at 206-220-7170.”
Last week’s strike wasn’t the first local laser incident.
Local radio station KONP reports that “last year, 34-year-old Port Angeles resident Randall Muck was arrested and indicted by a Federal Grand Jury for a similar incident involving a Coast Guard helicopter. That case is still pending.”
This story was originally published January 14, 2020 at 1:41 PM with the headline "Laser hits Washington helicopter — and the Coast Guard wants to know who did it."
