To use the word anniversary may be grammatically correct, but its intonation hardly seems appropriate for a tragedy that still leaves many questions.
Sunday at 11:57 pm, marks the exact year when Trooper 2 fell from the sky killing Pilot Stephen Bunker, Trooper First Class Mickey Lippy, EMT Tonya Mallard and patient Ashley Younger.
They are four deaths one man says should have been prevented.
In your whistle blower letter dated September 11th last year, the first line was 'your immediate attention is requested to prevent loss of life', did you believe that at the time?, asked Kuebler, “Yes I did. Yes I did."
Pete Peterson was the Maryland State Police Pilot who wrote the whistle blower letter last September before the crash of Trooper 2.
He had been flying with MSP for more than nine years. He says his concerns were too deep and too critical not to blow the whistle; that people would die if the life saving aviation command continued as it was.
"I did believe that, I thought it was just a matter of time. You can see the progression of things over a three to four year period. All the components were in place."
Peterson has 36 years of flying experience. As a civilian pilot with MSP, he started seeing latent failures in the system in 2004, starting with an executive summary he was charged with writing.
The conclusion of the summary pieced together by several work groups was that MSP needed a new fleet of choppers because of what wasn't being done in the aviation command.
The glaring fact this report highlighted was the lack of recording some maintenance records. According to the summary, Maryland State Police was directed to budget 70 thousand dollars for a Fleet Management Analysis System
The FMAS would track information essential for maintaining the dauphine fleet and predict just when the aircraft needed to be replaced, unfortunately the study notes, establishment and upkeep of the FMAS was never put in place; the money instead went to additional studies.
"It's critically important because in order to reach an informed decision about replacing the fleet and spending the millions of dollars it would cost to replace the fleet, you have to track its reliability and maintainability," said Peterson.
Peterson says the FMAS would have also tracked availability of the fleet, without it he would later argue in his whistle blower letter, less than air worthy aircraft were pushed back into service.
But Peterson says that 2004 executive summary was deemed confidential and never saw the light of day. Maryland State Police and its attorney declined comment several times for this story or any accusations made by Peterson.
As a publically funded medevac operation, MSP is not required to follow the same rules and strict FAA standards as private operations, nor is the operation currently accredited by the industry. Today, there is an effort to do so on both fronts.
It is Peterson's belief that previous lack of oversight opened the door to latent failures from an organization he says was shallow in aviation knowledge and ill equipped to be running an air medical service. A charge he levels against MSP, the Maryland Institute of EMS Systems and certain aspects of the legislative assembly.
"At some point all of them were aware there was a significant problem before the crash. It was brought to their attention. Everyone thought they could fix the problem under the table, and they couldn't."
Peterson's concerns written out in his whistle blower letter became public shortly after the crash. He was fired by the state police more than a month later for insubordination and not cooperating with the organization's internal crash investigation. Maryland State Police refused further comment on the matter.
A year later, Peterson has filed what is called an AIR 21, whistle blower protection for people in the aviation industry. It could take years to settle the claim but he hopes the change in the aviation command he seeks for all Marylanders doesn't take nearly as long.
"I'm still saddened by the loss of four people, knowing that I tried everything that I could, that I tried as a public servant with 36 years of public service to prevent it."
Again, the NTSB has yet to rule the cause of this crash.
Maryland State Police and its attorney declined comment on this story three times saying only that the organization will not comment on a former employee and that is their policy.
It is important to point out that Maryland State Police says the aviation command has worked tirelessly to improve the system since the crash and work to meet those stricter federal standards.
MSP choppers are now more safely equipped, maintenance records are better kept and the organization is working to procure new state of the art helicopters.
