A Navy MH-60S Seahawk lands during training near El Centro. Navy photo via Wikimedia Commons
A Navy helicopter based at Naval Air Station North Island crashed in the Imperial County desert near the California-Arizona border Thursday, injuring one of its four crew members.
The crash was reported around 5 p.m. in the Palo Verde area south of Blythe, according to an alert posted on the Naval Air Facility El Centro Facebook page.
The injured crew member was taken to a hospital with non-life- threatening injuries, according to published reports.
“It was a crash, and everybody survived,” Cmdr. Zachary Harrell, a spokesman for the San Diego-based Naval Air Forces command, told the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The crew was on a training mission in a MH-60S Seahawk helicopter assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 3, Harrell said.
The crash near Blythe came one day after five Camp Pendleton-based Marines were killed in a Marine Corps Osprey accident near the Imperial County community of Glamis, around 40 miles west of where Thursday’s Navy helicopter crash occurred.