Four tourists dead in air crash
The first reports came in just as we were preparing to go on the air with last night’s newscast. But we managed to dispatch a crew to the International Airport just as night was falling and with a little bit of luck and a lot of ingenuity reporter Patrick Jones, cameraman Wilson Pat and driver Stephen Ferguson managed to get to the site of the fatal crash and come back with the story. Viewers should note that one or two details appearing in Patrick’s on camera report were corrected later in the narrative.
The twin engine Beechcraft with four occupants took off from the Philip Goldson International Airport around 5:35 Wednesday evening, en route to San Pedro Town. Five minutes into the flight, however, the pilot, fifty-year-old William Fincher, radioed the tower requesting permission to return because one of the engines was malfunctioning. Permission granted, he turned the ill-fated plane around but on the final approach, crashed into some thick bush on the south bank of the Belize River.
Enrique Hoare, Operations Manager, P.G.I.A.
“At approximately 5:53 p.m. members of the CFR along with the CFO and the manager of operations arrived at the scene and saw the aircraft engulfed in flames approximately two hundred feet from the riverbank. Extinguishing of the flames and rescue operations commenced immediately and went on for another half hour during which time the fire was brought under control.”
Hoare says that despite the fact that authorities were on the scene a few minutes after the crash, there was nothing anyone could do to rescue the people on board, all four of whom perished in the flames.
Patrick Jones
“When we got to the site of the crash around 8:30, police already had the wreckage cordoned off. It was a gruesome site. The four occupants of the twin engine aircraft, believed to be three adults and a child, were burnt beyond recognition.”
Dr. Mario Estradabran, Pathologist
“We cannot say names, we cannot assume anything, especially at this moment; we just have to say that there is four different human remains.”
Q: “Does one appear to be that of a child?”
Dr. Mario Estradabran
“I cannot say at this moment if it’s a child or an adult. This will be a very difficult case; this will be a big challenge, and the more important aspect of it is not to determine the cause of death. The more important aspect to it is to do the identification and that will take probably even weeks, up to months or probably more.”
Q: “Without a conclusive postmortem examination, would we be stepping the line if we assumed that these people all burned to death?”
Dr. Mario Estradabran
“Up to now so far, I believe that will be the real cause of death. The main forensic medical legal term is calcination but that also has to take different steps to prove, to prove if some of them died by burning or they died before the plane got into fire.”
Those killed in addition to the pilot were forty-one year old Lee Daruska, thirty-eight year old David Williams and thirty-six year old Pamela Wreblem, all U.S. nationals from Houston, Texas. At a mid-morning press conference, Chief Executive Officer for the Airports Authority Rurico Alvarado told reporters that the four people were vacationers who arrived in the country on Monday of this week. They were reportedly on their way to San Pedro to spend the night, before returning to the States today. While the investigation into the fatal crash is just getting underway, Aircraft Engineer Glis Marin, who watched the plane go down, says a combination of pilot error and mechanical failure may have contributed to the catastrophe.
Glis Marin, Aircraft Engineer
“The aircraft was turning what we’d call base -the normal flight pattern – turning into final, when just before turning final, what happened is the aircraft, if I may demonstrate with this, turned or banked to the left, which I assume, right. I’m only assuming, that this engine failed – the left engine – and it pulled the aircraft to the left then it dipped and probably the crosswind that caught this pulled the aircraft over and it went down. I would assume he intentionally did it to try and make contact with the airport or land as quick as possible, which, I think, was something wrong that he did.”
Q: “What should he have done?”
Glis Marin
“He should have proceeded his normal pattern until he had fully recovered, then turn probably the same way or opposite and then return to the airport.”
Director of Civil Aviation Efrain Gomez says the plane was at the normal altitude of between a thousand and fifteen hundred feet for maneuvering to land when it went down.
Efrian Gomez, Director of Civil Aviation
“Well, the early indications of this accident is initially the pilot said he had some problems with an engine so we can say there was a problem with the engine. We know it was an aircraft with two engines, so that could have allowed the pilot to return and make a safe landing with one engine and even if he lost the second engine, he could have still come back and do a landing because he was very close to the airport. So there is the possibility that he did not maneuver the aircraft properly in the journeying procedures and he lost control of the aircraft.”
Gomez has already been in touch with both U.S. Federal Aviation Authority and the National Transportation Safety Board and has briefed them on the crash and is staying in close communication with them as the investigation into the incident continues. Patrick Jones for News Five.
Representatives of both Raytheon, the company which made the airframe and Continental, the company that built the engines, are expected in the country by Sunday to assist with the investigation. The last fatal air disaster in Belize occurred almost a year ago, on July twenty-third. Local pilot Dwight Santana died when his Tropic Air Cessna crashed into a house in the Belama Extension area of Belize City. According to the Director of Civil Aviation, Efrain Gomez, the investigation into that crash has been completed and a report has been sent to the Ministry of Transportation.
