Massive communications failures brought on by bad weather, poorly functioning radios and remote terrain hampered the effort to find and rescue three people involved in a state police helicopter crash last June, according to a report.

In addition, bickering and hostile accusations among the volunteer search and rescue teams that responded to the crash added to the chaos and may have contributed to the inherent danger involved in the mission, according to the report from search and rescue officials that was posted online late last week.

"I know that emotions and stress were high on everyone involved," wrote Andrew Simmons, leader of a team from Albuquerque Mountain Rescue. "There were problems on the mission, unexplained massive communication holes and a breakdown in the information chain which made incident command ineffective. I hope that when all the information is reviewed that some good learning will occur across the board."

The state police helicopter — piloted by Sgt. Andy Tingwall — crashed about 9:40 p.m. June 10 after picking up a stranded hiker in the area of Lake Katherine and Hidden Lake, just north of Santa Fe Baldy. The helicopter's tail rotor apparently struck a tree on a high ridge just as a wintry storm descended, and the fuselage struck the mountain and tumbled down a steep slope.

Tingwall and the hiker, Megumi Yamamoto of Tokyo, who'd been camping with her boyfriend, died in the crash. Officer Wesley Cox, the helicopter's spotter, survived.

Simmons said communications began to break down almost immediately after his team began hiking toward the supposed crash site in cold, rainy conditions. The mountains east of Santa Fe received close to a foot of snow from the storm.

"During the hike in on the Windsor Trail, communications quickly became difficult to incident base," he wrote in a synopsis of the incident.

"While on the trail, it became obvious that crucial mission information was changing. We heard something about an airlift that occurred at the crash site."

Simmons' team made repeated attempts to obtain information about the airlift and who it involved so they could know how many people still remained to be rescued, he wrote. However, the "information was unavailable or not given for many hours causing great confusion in the field teams."

Another search and rescue commander said the incident commander was "keeping radio silence" on that information.

While on the trail, Simmons' team encountered a lone search and rescue volunteer who was "without a pack and obviously very tired and distraught," according to Simmons' report. That volunteer, Mark Olah, said he and another team member had split from two others when one team member had to return to base with symptoms of frostbite.

Olah and Jonas Anderson "continued in severe conditions into very steep alpine terrain," Simmons reported.

"When they were close to turning back, they made contact with one subject, the spotter (Cox) from the crash," Simmons wrote. "They attempted to warm the hypothermic and injured subject, giving him all the extra clothes available."

The two rescuers apparently contacted Cox very near the helicopter crash site, contrary to news reports at the time.

Another search and rescue official, Stephen Attaway, wrote that reports about Cox walking two miles from the crash before being found were false. In addition, Cox said reports that he and Tingwall yelled back and forth to each other during the night also were not true, Attaway wrote in his report.

When Anderson and Olah found Cox, they could not establish radio contact with anyone because of the terrain and cold, nearly dead batteries in their radios, according to Simmons' report. The two men decided that Anderson would stay with Cox, while Olah would hike until he could make radio contact, the report states.

Another search official, Marc Beverly, said Olah had to hike six miles before establishing a radio link, according to Beverly's account of the operation.

Olah notified incident commanders he and Anderson had found Cox at 11:55 a.m. June 11, according to a schedule of communications. At 12:30 p.m., a National Guard Black Hawk helicopter hoisted Cox aboard and flew him to Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, according to the communication schedule.

However, no one bothered to tell the teams in the field that Cox had been rescued, according to the reports from all three search and rescue commanders who submitted reports. In fact, members of the search team that found the crash site, which involved the "extreme risk" of rappelling over ice and loose rocks, were angry that they hadn't been told of the airlift, Attaway wrote in his report.

"Undue risk was taken trying to get to a victim that was already hoisted to safety," he wrote.

Anderson, the man who stayed with Cox, was not airlifted out. In fact, incident commanders assumed he was fine, which wasn't the case, the report says. Anderson wandered into an advanced base camp on his own accord after trying for 12 hours to hike out in deep snow. He was so physically drained he was hallucinating by the time other team members walked him out, the report says.

Also, the report says a field commander told on-site search and rescue personnel to arrest and handcuff Yamamoto's boyfriend, Paul Harrington, who was still searching for her by the time he was contacted by search teams, according to Attaway's report. The field commander reportedly said of Harrington, "the (expletive) had caused enough trouble," he wrote. The field commander also said Harrington wasn't to be informed of his girlfriend's death, although another volunteer who didn't know of the order told him, the report stated.

Attaway wrote that he was "greatly relieved" when he encountered an unhandcuffed Harrington, who was hiking out of the wilderness.

The reports are only draft. The public can view and comment on the report at the New Mexico Search and Rescue Review Board portion of the Department of Public Safety Web site at dps.nm.org. The final report will be issued by the New Mexico Search and Rescue Review Board within the next couple weeks, said Lt. Eric Garcia, a state police spokesman.

Contact Jason Auslander at 986-3076 or jauslander@sfnewmexican.com.