Photo: Collected
Bangla Press Desk: Two helicopters collided in mid-air in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, killing six people, including the crew and passengers.
The accident occurred at around 9 am local time on Sunday (June 14) in the sky over the western suburb of Recreio dos Bandeiras. Authorities have launched an investigation into the cause of the accident. Al Jazeera reports.
One helicopter had five people on board. The other had only the pilot. No one survived.
The local fire service said that after the mid-air collision, the two helicopters crashed into the parking lot of an electric car showroom. As a result, about 20 electric cars in the parking lot caught fire.
Fire service spokesman Fabio Contreras said that the fire had to be extinguished very quickly due to toxic gases emitted from the lithium-ion batteries of electric cars. When such batteries catch fire, they emit highly toxic gases and increase the intensity and temperature of the fire many times over. These electric vehicles require three to four times more water to put out a fire than a regular car.
The fire service also said that the area where the accident occurred was very densely populated. If the helicopter had crashed into a residential area instead of the empty parking lot of two showrooms, the death toll could have been much higher. Rescuers recovered the wreckage of a helicopter from among the burning electric cars in the parking lot, with the bodies of five people inside. About 100 meters (328 feet) away, another helicopter was found, with only the pilot dead.
BP/TD
