An eyewitness has spoken of her terror as she watched a helicopter crash into the rooftop of a luxury hotel in Far North Queensland during the early hours of Monday morning. The chopper crashed into the DoubleTree by Hilton on the Cairns waterfront just before 1.50am, prompting the mass evacuation of 400 people from the building.
Grave fears are held for the pilot of the helicopter. Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today Two people, a man, aged 83, and a female, aged 76, staying in the suite underneath the rooftop, were taken to Cairns hospital in a stable condition. Queensland Ambulance Service senior operations supervisor for the Far Northern Region Caitlin Dennings told media the propellers dislodged from the helicopter.
One propeller landed in the pool, and another on The Esplanade. On Monday,Cairns local Veronica Knight told Nat and Shirvo on Sunrise the “small” helicopter was going “really fast” before the crash. “This helicopter, I just saw it come straight .
.. real fast,” Knight said.
“It seemed to come from the pier over there and straight down over the sea, straight, and it was going really, really fast. I thought, ‘wow, that doesn’t look right’. “It was pretty low, so I got .
.. I was trying to video it, but it went too fast.
And then it disappeared for about five to 10 minutes. Then I got a shock, it came back again. “It was coming back along the sea again.
And The Esplanade, and then all of a sudden it suddenly veered to the right.