I was downtown with one of my clients this morning showing some condos in the Plaza Towers when one of Spectrum Health's Aero Med Helicopters crashed on the roof of the hospital. I see those copters quite often in transit over the city to and from the hospital, but never gave it a second though that they could also have an accident like that. My hat is off to the pilots and Doctors that perform such a dangerous and important job!!!

It sounds as though it was preparing to take off when the tail section hit a radio tower causing the helicopter to fall and exploded in flames. You can read the alerts on Spectrum's website here. The cause is still under investigation. The fire crews did a great job in putting the fire out quickly and there were no fatalities. The pilot and passenger were able to get away before it burst into flames.

Several floors were evacuated as a precaution and neither of the two people on board the helicopter were seriously injured. Thank goodness for that. Mlive's blog has a good chronology of the accident here.

Here are some factoids from the National Transportation Safety Board:

- Between 1998 and 2005 there were 89 medical helicopter crashes in which 75 people were killed.

- About half of those crashes happened at night.

- 77 percent happened during bad weather. But WOOD-TV's Storm Team 8 reports there were ideal flying conditions in Grand Rapids this morning at the time of the crash. Visibility was greater than 10 miles and winds were calm at less than 5 mph.