Go line yourself at 600ft in forward flight (double an ILS glideslope angle) 1 mile off the end of a runway, and tell me where else you are going to land but on the runway.  A three degree glideslope is 300ft per mile.  He was OEI.  A 500ft per minute descent would have taken him the exact same forward distance to the airport at his lowest OEI power setting.

How soon do those fire lights go off?  He had about a minute and a half from the time he started turning to the time it came apart.  Add in human factor to diagnose what was going on. 

It would have been real easy for a fuel line to blow, cause an engine spool down, and not get a fire or fire light for another 10-30 seconds.  There would be all kinds of bells and whistles going off from the engine spool down eng fail, low rotor, and eventually the fire gong.  So then after panic piecing your OEI checklist, and verifying your RPM is good and your other engine has you, while in the middle of a turn and talking talking to ATC because you think you just have a normal engine failure, you get to start over and run your fire memorization checklist because you just got another gong stating another emergency.

Now wait a few seconds to see if the fire light goes out after pushing the shut off valve, because it takes 10-20 seconds to burn all the fuel in the line and kill the engine, and only then unloads the fire supression agent, I think after the engine spools below 50% N1, and then a few seconds to put out the file and reset the sensors.....All going at you a million times a second, while staring at a normal to steep approach angle down to the runway.... 

Some of you are on here saying you would have just chopped the throttle of the second good engine and auto'd this thing to a parking lot.  Tell me you're new without telling me you're new.

I don't care if you're on a 1 mile final at only 300ft.  If you get a fire light, you're still landing on the runway.  Anybody who says anything different is a moron.  Until you have all the info, you can't judge this.

Get over yourselves.  You're not that good.

One final, but likely unrelated to this scenario note to some of the armchair quarterbacks here, false fire lights are real.  Ask some of the GOMERs here why they didn't dump their collective and make precautionarys to the water, salt water destroying their helicopters and engines in the process.  It's what the checklist says.  They didn't do it, and you wouldn't have either.

.... but a confirmed fire:

-that still persists after attempted suppression - Land/ditch immediately

-that is no longer evident after attempted suppression - Land as soon as possible

I just showed a very realistic scenario that could take you a minute before you are at the land immediately stage.

Now after You've determined it's time to land immediately you've got 500ft altitude to burn and a runway 25 seconds and half a mile off your nose.  Or you can chop the throttle and auto down in 10-12 seconds.

What's land immediately to you?

one mile may as well be a 100. land immediately is land whether you have a good place to put the aircraft or not. LAND IMMEDIATLEY. what you are doing is landing as soon as practicable by delaying.                        

LAND IMMEDIATELY.

The fire you see isn't in the engine compartment. Listening to the tower tape he merely says he's had an engine failure and he requested priority handling to the runway. Not a word about a fire.

You may or may not understand that the engine could have (likely) quit before the fire lights went off (if they ever went off).  Sometimes by 10-20 seconds.  (The FAA requirement is something like 1 min) 

If the fire light came on first, he had to diagnose this for a few seconds, establish OEI flight because he's in high power climb, and then press the button.  Then WAIT for the longest 10-20 seconds of your life because the engine doesn't just shut down right away.  

And then, wait some more.  Because the fire sensors take a few seconds, sometimes as long as 10-15 additional seconds to reset if the fire suppression system worked.

Either way, you're somewhere between 30-45 seconds minumum before you have reached the land immeadiately portion of the checklist.  That's pushing a mile of ground coverage right now and you don't know what portion of the emergecy he turned back to the airport for.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say the fire light came on before the engine quit and he started the checklist immediately and he turned immediately.  He's now halfway back to the airport, only 1/2 mile out, at 500ft, assuming no delays and no complications diagnosing the problem, before the checklist says land immediately.  You inexperienced armchair quarterbacks a crucifying him for not doing what? Going straight down?  He probably could have auto'd to the airport by the time his checklist said he couldn't put the fire out and land immediately.  

I feel sorry for your students.

One of the few ways this comes back in your arguments favor is if he got the fire light immediately, had a fire supression system, but chose not to push the button because he did not want to return and land at the airport OEI.  But you don't have that information so you can't judge on that at this time.

Lets not forget as many other are saying.  Theres a realistic chance he didn't get a fire indication and didn't know there was a fire.  

lol

He knew something was going on.  The smell inside would have been another indication.  With considerable experience on twins, including EC135's, I would have put it down. OEI or not, enough power from one to maneuver and accomplish a surviveable landing.

Do I really need to define that for YOU?

Finally someone that gets it.  I fly from Pompano regularly and I am trained in the 135.  He made the best decision with the information he had for when and where it happened.  

Furthermore, the fire did not start in the engine so no fire warning initially. I have inside knowledge.  It will come out eventually. 

sounds suspiciously like the op is answering his own post 

Nope.  I was reply number 1 and 3.  I'm just a guy who has a respectable amount of EC135 time and know there's a few fire scenarios that wouldn't give you any fire indications or a land immediately even if you were quick and had the emergency checklist memorized.  It sounds like there's a few others that feel the way I do.

Engine fires in flight have you messing around with the checklist for a minute before giving you a land immediately.

Electrical fires can have smoke in the cockpit with zero fire indications and the checklists have you juggling the bus ties and generators off and on trying to isolate the problem before giving you a land as soon as possible. 

Armchair quarterbacks are screaming they'd blow the checklists and land half a mile away from their land immediately decision point on a busy highway (because that's the distance it would take to get slowed down and lose altitude) vs half a mile away landing at an airport.

Did that EC135 still have the factory fire suppression system still installed? I've seen pics and it looks like they have a Metro EMS interior install. During completion quite a few vendors have that system removed by Metro to save weight. 

They were public service with no budget. Had an outside audit that said the aircraft needed replacement. All of them are in a world of crap. Starting at the top with the county commisioners,  and moving on to the sheriff, and maintenance. 

was is airworthy or not. if it was, who cares. is this your first day.

Do you need a pilot's license to fly public service or maintain them?

why would a mechanic need a pilot's "license" bro

https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/video/report-crashed-bso-helicopter-should-have-been-replaced-by-2022/

one of them aviation consultants out to all the law enforcement agencies that are still flying 50 year old+ OH6's and OH58's and see what they come up with 

I'd trust a 50 year old OH-58 series helicopter over a 10 year old Airbus anything ... Airbus make a nice helicopter, but not built to last. 

99% of engine fire warnings are spurious, least they were in the 70s and 80s.

Pilot has to first determine if he believes the warnings and indications he is getting in the cockpit...

All these land right now folks either have never had a spurious indication ...or don't need to be flying for being so damn timid....

I finished my career as a training pilot / check airman...I  always taught that upon detection / indication of an in flight fire that the first thing to do was lower the collective / and set up for a forced landing and then begin the confirmation process. ( look for smoke, check instruments etc. ) Once on the ground, if pax are on board, evacuate. Turn the tail into the wind and you will know if you are on fire.

but what are you going to do now, after this happened, if it happens to you?

the bell and light, if you get them, have to be believed. no other sane choice. 

people obsess about "establishing OEI condition.". ...just dump collective and haul nose up to less than 110 knot attitude. that's "established" and it takes about 3 seconds. 

then flip the guard and mash the button. you're supposed to get certain indications that it worked. while waiting on those--and again, all this takes about another 3 seconds--confirm you have the correct switch/same as the FIRE side, and shut the engine down with the switch also. this will kill it immediately. 

now if the FIRE light goes off, you can land "as soon as possible." you're the boss. what does that mean to you? do you feel lucky?

if it stays on, it's land IMMEDIATELY. i guess that means different things to different people. after watching the video, i know what it means to me, now. what does it mean to you, now?

I wasn't there.  Pilot didn't state anything about engine fire that I heard, I thought he said emergency.  I'm wondering if he had fire in pelican rack, maybe location of oxygen bottles.  Tail boom attach right above pelican rack.  If fire there might get avionics overheat caution but no engine fire.  No fire suppression for avionics area in pelican rack.  Engine compartment designed to contain fire up to 2500 deg F.  If all this happens within a minute after takeoff, I don't think it was engine fire.  Handled appropriately.  Good thing is pilot survived so all will be known soon enough

Not saying he did anything wrong but I also wouldn't exactly call this a landing.

Well said. If you can safely cruise at 500' or less, it(this incident) would be another good reason to.