Tag: bodies

Eastern Congo Plane Crash Kills at Least 27 People

November 24, 2019 / WIL BALDWIN

GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – At least 27 people were killed, including some on the ground, when a small plane crashed into a densely populated neighborhood in the city of Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday, a rescue official said.

The propeller plane, which was operated by local company Busy Bee, crashed shortly after take-off en route to the city of Beni, about 250 km (155 miles) to the north, officials said.

The company said the 19-seater Dornier 228-200 had 16 passengers and two crew members on board.

There was no word yet on what might have caused the accident.

Joseph Makundi, the coordinator of rescue services in Goma, told Reuters that 27 bodies had been recovered from the rubble, including those of several people hit by falling debris.

“I was at a restaurant with my family when I saw the plane spinning three times in the air and emitting a lot of smoke,” said Djemo Medar, an eyewitness in Goma’s Mapendo neighborhood. “After that we saw the plane crash into this house,” he said pointing to a nearby building.

“We know the pilot. His name is Didier. He was shouting, ‘Help me, Help me.’ But we had no way to get to him because the fire was so powerful,” Medar said.

At the crash site, residents threw water from buckets and cooking pots onto the smoldering wreckage. The rear section of the plane rested sideways, propped up by a wall, videos posted on social media showed.

Police arrested one man for stealing cash from the rubble and fired warning shots to disperse people who had started looting, he said.

Air accidents are relatively frequent in Congo because of lax safety standards and poor maintenance. All Congolese commercial carriers, including Busy Bee, are banned from operating in the European Union.

A cargo plane departing from the same airport and carrying staff members of President Felix Tshisekedi crashed an hour after take-off last month, killing all eight people on board..

Writing by Hereward Holland; Editing by Aaron Ross/Mark Potter/ Frances Kerry/Jane Merriman

Alaska Mid-Air Seaplane Crash Leaves 6 Dead

May 14, 2019 / WIL BALDWIN

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – Searchers found the bodies of the last two Alaska seaplane crash victims on Tuesday evening, after a hunt through the debris and frigid waters following a mid-air collision that left a total of six people dead and 10 injured, officials said.

“The last two people were found. They were found deceased,” said U.S. Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Matthew Schofield.

The discovery of the bodies closes the search at the scene where the two seaplanes crashed after colliding over the inlet waters near Ketchikan, in southeastern Alaska, Schofield said.

Work at the crash site will now shift to an investigation into what led the two planes, which were ferrying Princess Cruises passengers on sightseeing expeditions, to strike each other and fall into the waters of George Inlet.

A team of 14 National Transportation Safety Board investigators has been sent to the site and divers will start working on Wednesday to pull up the wreckage of the two planes.

The two missing people, an Australian and a Canadian, were among 14 passengers from a Princess Cruises ship who boarded two seaplanes operated by separate tour companies in the town of Ketchikan on Monday, the cruise line said.

A 14-member team from the NTSB began investigating the crash on Tuesday and is unlikely to determine the cause during the week the team will be at the scene, NTSB board member Jennifer Homendy told a news conference.

Ten people survived but were injured in the collision, which took place over open water during daylight, the Coast Guard said. The dead include one of the pilots. The victims were not immediately identified.

Three of the injured were in serious condition and seven in fair condition, Dr Peter Rice, medical director of the PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center, told a separate news conference.

The water temperature off Ketchikan on Tuesday was 48 Fahrenheit, according to the National Weather Service. Expected survival time in 40-50F (4-10C) is one to three hours, according to the United States Search & Rescue Task Force website.

The investigators will be collecting information from the survivors, the Federal Aviation Administration, any other witnesses who might have been in the area, flight logs, training records and other sources, including the wrecked planes, Homendy said.

“We still have to recover the planes and then we have to look at those. It takes some significant work to really understand how the two came together,” she said.

All of the planes’ passengers arrived in Ketchikan on the cruise ship Royal Princess during a seven-day trip between Vancouver, British Columbia, and Anchorage, Alaska, Princess Cruises said.

Ten passengers and a pilot were aboard one float plane, a de Havilland Otter DHC-3, operated by Taquan Air. Four passengers and a pilot were aboard the second float plane, a de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver, run by Mountain Air Service of Ketchikan.

The crash site, at Coon Cove about 300 miles (480 km) south of Juneau, Alaska’s capital, lies near a tourist lodge that runs excursions to the nearby Misty Fjords National Monument.

Ketchikan-based Taquan Air said the plane was returning from a sightseeing tour of Misty Fjords when the crash occurred.

Reporting by Yereth Rosen in Anchorage; additional reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta and Barbara Goldberg in New York; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Cynthia Osterman and Leslie Adler

Two Bodies Recovered After Amazon Cargo Plane Crash

February 25, 2019 / WIL BALDWIN

(Reuters) – Two bodies have been recovered from the wreckage of an Amazon Prime Air cargo plane that nosedived into a bay outside Houston on Saturday, and a search was ongoing for a third victim, authorities said.

All three people aboard the Boeing 767 cargo jetliner operated by Atlas Air Worldwide died in the crash as it approached Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Atlas and Boeing Co said in statements on Sunday.

Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne told a news conference on Sunday that two bodies had been recovered and the search continued for the third person as well as the plane’s black boxes.

The sheriff’s office released a video showing fragments of the aircraft and cargo littering mudflats after the tide went out in the bay, exposing more of the crash site.

U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chairman Robert Sumwalt said the agency obtained about five seconds of security video from a local jail that showed the crash.

“The aircraft is in the video as it’s descending in a steep descent, a steep nose down attitude,” Sumwault told the press briefing, adding that there was no distress call.

Asked by a reporter if the incident was “anything more than a plane crash,” Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Perrye Turner said, “that’s what we have right now.”

The plane crashed at the north end of Trinity Bay near the small city of Anahuac, about 20 miles (32 km) southeast of the airport around 12.40 p.m. (1340 EST) after taking off from Miami.

“This is a sad time for all of us,” Bill Flynn, Atlas Air’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. “Our team continues to work closely with the NTSB, the FAA and local authorities on the ground in Houston.”

Atlas Air Worldwide has been operating Boeing 767 freighters on behalf of Amazon following a 2016 deal.

Boeing said in a statement that it had sent a team to provide technical assistance to the NTSB as it conducted its investigation.

(Reporting by Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Daniel Wallis & Simon Cameron-Moore)

Eastern Congo Plane Crash Kills at Least 27 People

Alaska Mid-Air Seaplane Crash Leaves 6 Dead

Two Bodies Recovered After Amazon Cargo Plane Crash

Archives