History
1972 - ASTREA began operations with three Korean War-era Bell 47G helicopters based at Gillespie Field in El Cajon.
1997 - On February 16, Deputy Patrick "Pat" S. Coyle, 42, died after the ASTREA helicopter in which he and pilot Ron Hobson were flying crashed in Sycamore Canyon, northeast of Santee, California. His death marked the first fatality in the then 25-year history of the sheriff's air support unit.
2003 - Cedar Fire and Paradise Fire
2005 - ASTREA receives two refurbished Bell 205A1++ "Super Huey" firefighting helicopters. These are the first two aircraft purchased for the new regional fire helicopter program the county started after the October 2003 wildfires. Both are single-engine, medium-lift copters equipped with 375 gallon underbelly water tanks. The helicopters arrived at Gillespie Field after a three-day, 2,000-mile flight from Eagle Copters of Calgary, Canada.
2008 - A new Bell 407 is acquired and equipped to support law enforcement and command and control missions.
2009 - ASTREA sells two of its Hughes 500Ds. (ASTREA 2 & 4) These will eventually be replaced with MD530Fs.
2010 - The only MD500E owned by ASTREA is converted to an MD530F, which is better suited for high altitude and hot weather operations.
Read more about this topic: Aerial Support To Regional Enforcement Agencies
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)