NOME, Alaska — The bodies of all 10 people who were killed when a regional airline flight crashed off the coast of western Alaska have been recovered and identified, authorities said Saturday.
“All ten individuals aboard the Bering Air plane have been officially brought home,” the Nome Volunteer Fire Department said in a Facebook post Saturday night. “Nome SAR efforts stand by for our Bering Air crew to complete their aircraft recovery operations.”
The small commuter aircraft carrying nine passengers and one pilot took off from Unalakleet and was headed toward Nome on Thursday afternoon before disappearing. The plane was later found on Friday about 34 miles southeast of Nome, according to the US Coast Guard. All 10 on board were declared dead.
The pilot of the plane was 34-year-old Chad Antill of Nome, while the passengers were identified by Alaska State Troopers as Liane Ryan, 52; Donnell Erickson, 58; Andrew Gonzalez, 30; Kameron Hartvigson, 41; Rhone Baumgartner, 46; Jadee Moncur, 52; Ian Hofmann, 45; Talaluk Katchatag, 34; and Carol Mooers, 48.
The crash comes just a week after an American Airlines plane and a Black Hawk Helicopter collided in Washington, DC, killing 67 people, rattling the airline industry and spurring an expanded FAA safety review. That collision, along with the Alaska crash, are two of the deadliest plane disasters of the last decade in the US.
The wreckage is currently resting on sea ice that officials described as young and unstable, and heavy snow and winds in the area are expected this weekend. The plane’s wreckage was expected to be taken for further analysis, officials said.
“We don’t know how long that’s going to take. It could go hours; it could go potentially days. Coming up to tomorrow we have 18 hours of potential recovery time,” Jim West, chief of the Nome Volunteer Fire Department, said at a news conference Friday night, citing the ever-changing conditions of the crash site and incoming weather.
A winter weather advisory is now in effect until 9 p.m. Sunday, with blowing snow, rain and mixed precipitation to be expected in Nome and other parts of western Alaska, the National Weather Service announced.
Some areas may see up to five inches of snow, with ice accumulations of around a tenth of an inch, the NWS said. Wind gusts as high as 45 mph will also be recorded.
“The conditions out there are dynamic, so we’ve got to do it safely and the fastest we can,” West added.
Learning how the accident unfolded
Investigators are working to determine the cause of the crash –– and how the Cessna 208B Grand Caravan suddenly dropped in elevation and speed. Analyzing air traffic control data will be key to the National Transportation Safety Board’s probe, officials said.
The NTSB has nine people working on the ground along with a dozen specialists supporting them back in Washington, DC, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said at a Saturday news conference.
“Please understand there’s some difficult conditions, because this is on an ice floe, which is moving about five miles a day,” she added.
The Cessna aircraft, operated by Bering Air, was about 12 miles offshore when its position was lost, according to the Coast Guard. The plane had not communicated its position through an emergency transmitter, officials said.
The aircraft “experienced some kind of event which caused them to experience a rapid loss in elevation and a rapid loss in speed” around 3:18 p.m. Thursday, Coast Guard Lt. Commander Benjamin McIntyre-Coble said.
An FAA camera monitoring the weather in Nome showed what appeared to be “near-whiteout conditions” over several hours on the afternoon of the crash, according to CNN affiliate KTUU.
The pilot of the plane told Anchorage Air Traffic Control he intended to enter a holding pattern while waiting for the runway in Nome to be cleared, according to an update Thursday from the Nome Volunteer Fire Department Facebook page.
A small community accustomed to flying mourns
It is not unusual for Alaskans to travel between places by small plane due to the vast landscape and lack of transportation infrastructure available.
At a vigil hosted Friday by the city of Nome, an area home to about 9,700 people, Amanda Snyder, pastor at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, urged those in attendance to lean on each other for support.
“Please do not isolate yourself in your grief. In the coming days, in the weeks, as we begin to hear of which families are impacted, our hearts are going to break over and over, and it’s okay to mourn and grieve, but please do not isolate,” Snyder said.
“It’s just heartbreaking. Because every single person in this room has been on one of those planes,” Snyder told The Nome Nugget, the city’s local paper. “It hits home.”
“Words can’t express the loss we’re all feeling, we’re all connected in so many ways,” said Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who joined the vigil via video conference. “It’s hard to accept the reality of our loss.”
“On behalf of my fellow Nomites,” Nome Mayor John Handeland said during the news conference, “I extend our collective condolences and support to the families and loved ones of the passengers and pilot and the others in our big Alaska family who are also impacted by this tragic occurrence.”
Handeland offered a prayer, and said, “Hug your people tonight, tightly and often.”
In Unalakleet, a city of less than 800 people, the Hansens, a well-known local family, have been making pizzas at their restaurant, Peace On Earth, for staff at Bering Air as well as events at the church and school on Friday, KTUU reported.
Two of the passengers in the fatal crash, Kameron Hartvigson and Rhone Baumgartner, were employees from Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium who traveled to Unalakleet “to service a heat recovery system that is critical to the community’s water plant,” the nonprofit said Friday night.
“Rhone Baumgartner and Kameron Hartvigson were passionate about the work they did, cared deeply for the communities they served, and made a lasting impact on rural communities across our state,” Natasha Singh, ANTHC interim president and CEO, said in a statement.
“They were the best at what they did and had just flown into Unalakleet to help address heating and mechanical issues in the depths of winter. They gave the ultimate sacrifice for the people we serve in the work we do.”
Homendy said she understands how tragic the crash is to the area.
“The NTSB knows that villages like Nome and Alaska aviation are tight-knit communities, so this tragedy affects so many,” she said Saturday. “Please know that we’ll work diligently to determine how this happened, with the ultimate goal of improving safety here in Alaska and across the United States.”
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