Pilot radioed no plane problems
HELENA – U.S. Forest Service dispatchers lost contact with a plane that crashed into a mountain, killing three of five on board, just minutes before its scheduled landing at a grass air strip south of Glacier National Park, a preliminary crash report released Friday says.
Contract pilot Jim Long said he was “inbound for Schafer,” a guard station in the Great Bear-Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, before dispatchers lost radio communication midafternoon on Sept. 20, says the report by National Transportation Safety Board staff.
No engine or mechanical failure was mentioned, and investigators have confirmed the wreckage shows no signs of it.
Ground crews found the 80-foot-long path of debris from the Cessna U206G a day later, the cockpit and cabin destroyed by fire and the propeller blades contorted and gouged into the rocky ground, NTSB investigator Georgia Struhsaker said in the report.
Initially all five passengers were declared dead, but a day later Forest Service employees Jodee Hogg, 23, of Billings and Matthew Ramige, 29, of Jackson, Wyo., shocked authorities and their relatives when they emerged from the wilderness, injured and badly burned.
Long, 60, of Kalispell, Mont., and Forest Service employees Ken Good, 58, and Davita Bryant, 32, both of Whitefish, Mont., died in the crash.
Struhsaker was not available for comment Friday. But she has indicated investigators are starting to focus on weather and rugged terrain as possible factors in the crash.
The weather was unsettled that day, with periods of sun interrupted by bursts of rain and wind that delayed the flight by two hours. And the steep terrain included long forested valleys, separated by ridges and ending in near vertical cirques.
Flathead County Sheriff Jim Dupont said he and his deputies have spent hours poring over photos of the crash site, and he believes they made the right call in initially declaring everyone dead.
“Unfortunately, Mother Nature pulled a few nasty tricks on them there,” Dupont said Friday. “Anything that was there (footprints or other clues) had left” by the time searchers arrived, he said. Footprints disappeared as snow melted.
The Forest Service also is investigating, although its final findings, like those of the NTSB, were not expected for several months.
Hogg and Ramige, who hiked 29 hours to reach a highway and huddled together to stay warm as temperatures fell to the 20s, are recovering from the crash. Hogg has been released from a Kalispell hospital, and Ramige’s condition was upgraded to satisfactory Friday at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, hospital spokeswoman Susan Gregg-Hanson said.
Ramige suffered a broken back and severe burns to his hands, chest and face. He will undergo his second skin graft surgery on Monday, Gregg-Hanson said.