Wreckage of Skydivers' Plane Found in Cascades

Oct 09, 02:30 AM

Current Headlines: SEATTLE _ Searchers late Monday found the bodies of seven people amid the wreckage of a single-engine plane that crash in Washington state's rugged Cascade Range.

The search for three others was expected to continue Tuesday morning, but it appeared that no one had survived the crash, emergency officials said.

Searchers found the scattered wreckage of the Cessna 208 Grand Caravan that was carrying nine Snohomish-based skydivers and a pilot who were returning from a weekend outing in Idaho. Searchers initially said they were looking for survivors, but later said they had found seven bodies amid the wreckage.

The Grand Caravan had been reported missing on a flight from Star, Idaho, to Shelton, Wash., Sunday night.

Among those reported aboard the plane was 20-year-old Landon Atkin, of Snohomish, according to fellow skydiver Rick Mangan, a skydiving instructor with Blue Skies in Bremerton. Mangan met Atkin earlier this year and worked with him as an instructor for a brief time before the weather went foul in August, he said.

"He wanted to do some coaching with him and teach him some of the techniques of a different style of skydiving," Mangan said. "He's a very nice guy."

Atkin was a "packer" in Snohomish, meaning he packed parachutes, Mangan said.

At White Pass Lodge, where family members spent an anguished Monday awaiting word on their loved ones, Wanda Craig held a photo of her son Casey, who she said was aboard the plane.

"This is Casey here. If anyone has seen him out there please show them their way down the mountain," she said to KING-TV of Seattle.

The smell of fuel led searchers to the wreckage about 7:40 p.m. PDT, but they only found the front section of the plane, the sheriff's office said. The tail section of the plane had been detached and had not yet been found Monday night.

Officials used the serial number to confirm it was the skydivers' plane.

The plane disappeared from radar screens Sunday night about two-thirds of the way to its destination in Shelton. The area where the Cessna 208 Grand Caravan was found _ mountainous, heavily wooded terrain near White Pass _ had been the focus of an extensive air and ground search that began Monday morning and stretched into the evening. The region's tightknit community of skydivers spent an anguished Monday awaiting word on the group of fellow enthusiasts.

"It's agonizing," said Kandace Harvey, president of Harvey Field, the Snohomish airport the nine skydivers considered their main drop zone. "We're hoping and praying for a miracle. They're our friends; they're our family. And we all need to know they're OK."

The identities of the skydivers and the pilot were not released Monday, though members of the skydiving community used cellphones, online message boards and social-networking sites such as MySpace to try to determine who was on the missing plane. Some friends and relatives of those aboard had gathered Monday at a home in Snohomish, a city north of Seattle.

"It's a small family it's going to be somebody I know," said Mangan, who spent Monday "trying to rule out who was on (the plane) and who wasn't on it." The single-engine aircraft is owned by Kapowsin Air Sports in Shelton, said Jessie Farrington, the company's owner. Farrington said she rented the plane to the pilot and skydivers Friday for an event in Idaho. She said the team made a quick jump in Shelton on Friday before heading to Idaho.

The plane was due back at Shelton's Sanderson Field by 7:30 p.m. Sunday. When Farrington and her husband hadn't heard from them by 10:30 p.m., they called authorities.

Farrington described the pilot as experienced in flying skydiving trips.

The plane, a "stretch" version of Cessna's popular Caravan model, has been the subject of directives from the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada warning against operating in icy conditions. Since 1990, 20 crashes of the plane worldwide have been linked to icing. Problems have resulted with inexperienced pilots trying to fly the craft in poor weather, according to the two agencies.

Overnight temperatures in the White Pass area ranged from the upper 20s to near freezing Sunday night, said meteorologist Allen Kam of the National Weather Service in Seattle. At about 7 p.m. Sunday, wind gusts reached 45 knots and humidity contributed to cloudy conditions, he said.

Yakima County Search and Rescue officials said a hunter reported hearing a small plane with engine trouble about 8.p.m. Sunday and heard what might have been a crash southwest of Rimrock Lake. Using the hunter's account and radar information, air and ground search crews on Monday scoured an area southwest of Rimrock Lake.

The skydivers were on their way back from a skydiving "boogie" _ a sort of festival, or gathering of skydivers _ near Boise, Mangan said.

Elaine Harvey, co-owner of Skydive Snohomish, said nine of the 10 aboard were either employees of her business or local, licensed skydivers. Skydive Snohomish operates a training school and offers skydiving flights at Harvey Field.

The nighttime return flight to Shelton's Sanderson Field wasn't a jump run, but the skydivers would have had their parachutes nearby in the plane, Mangan said. He and others in the community were holding out hope that some of the skydivers may have parachuted from the plane before it went down.

"If I was on a jump plane that was having engine trouble, rather than risk a landing in the mountains, I would have gotten out of the plane," he said.

It's not unheard-of for skydivers to bail out of a plane before it hits the ground.

On Aug. 21, 1983, nine skydivers and two pilots were killed in the crash of a Lockheed L-18 Learstar near Silvana in Snohomish County. Fifteen skydivers successfully parachuted from the plane before it crashed in a field.

The plane, operated by Landry Aviation, had taken off from the Arlington Airport a short time earlier.

Mike Metcalf, of Kent, Wash., was among those who jumped from the plane and survived. He said news of Monday's crash transported him back to the 1983 incident.

"The first thing that went through my mind was a visual of the airplane going upside down in 1983. The first six months after that crash, every night I would wake up with that mental video playing in my mind _ watching it from the time it went over to the time it impacted the ground," he said. "You learn to live with it."

That day, he lost several close friends, bonded by the shared love of skydiving, he said. "We all went through some real tough months and years afterward. We don't think so much about the accident itself but about the friends we lost," he said.

On Monday, searchers had been unable to pick up any emergency distress signal from the aircraft, according to state Department of Transportation officials.

Ryan Shipley, 32, was among the skydivers who dropped by Harvey Field looking for news Monday about the crash, which he assumed involved some of his friends.

"It's a tightknit community," said Shipley, of Lake Stevens. "Skydiving is a language not a lot of people speak. If you find someone who speaks that language, it's an instant bond."

Shipley said that under different circumstances he might have been on that plane. "The past five boogies they've gone on, I've probably been on four of them," he said.

Some regulars at Skydive Snohomish are members of the Seattle Skydivers club, he said, a group of about 50 enthusiasts who also jump at Skydive Kapowsin near Shelton and at a drop zone in the Mount Vernon area.

Skydiving training includes emergency evacuations of aircraft, he said, a procedure usually launched by the pilot. "I pray to God they got that order and are in the Cascades somewhere," he said.

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