A pair of employees with a nonprofit tribal health organization were among the 10 people killed in a harrowing plane crash off the western coast of Alaska this week.
Rhone Baumgartner and Kameron Hartvigson, both of whom worked in utilities operations for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, were on a work trip when they boarded the doomed Bering Air flight to Nome Thursday, the organization said.
The pair serviced a critical part of a water plant in Unalakleet, where the single-engine turboprop Cessna Caravan departed from before the plane vanished, ANTHC said.
The employees 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,” ANTHC Interim President and CEO Natasha Singh said in a statement.
Identities have not been shared for the remaining victims, including seven other passengers and the pilot, whose bodies were discovered Friday along with the plane’s wreckage on sea ice, roughly 34 miles southeast of Nome, their destination.
The flight departed on Thursday afternoon at 2:37 pm local time, and officials lost communication with the plane less than an hour later, according to David Olson, director of operations for Bering Air.
At the time of departure, there was light snow and fog, with a temperature of 17 degrees, according to the National Weather Service.
Just before the plane disappeared, roughly 12 miles offshore around 3:18 pm, it suffered a “rapid loss” in elevation and speed, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Benjamin McIntyre-Coble said Friday.
“What that event is, I can’t speculate to.”
Local, state and federal agencies aided in the search effort, scouring the icy waters and the miles of the tundra for the small plane.
Inclement weather and the fact that the plane’s emergency transmitter did not relay its location in a distress call frustrated the search for the lost plane, officials said.
An FAA camera showed what appeared to be near white-out conditions lasting several hours Thursday afternoon, Alaska’s News Source reported.
The Nome Volunteer Fire Department launched a ground search on Thursday, but urged people not to form their own search and rescue crews “due to weather and safety concerns.” The Air Force and National Guard also deployed C-130 Hercules planes late Thursday, which were unsuccessful, fire officials said.
By Friday morning, the weather had improved, with clear skies at Nome Airport. The National Guard and Coast Guard deployed helicopter search teams while the Coast Guard also sent out a C-130 plane, the fire department said.
Coast Guard spokesperson Mike Salerno said Friday rescue crews spotted the plane by helicopter while searching over the aircraft’s last known location.
The recovery operation for the aircraft and the victims bodies could face difficulties over the weekend, including bad weather and that the sea ice the plane crashed into was “young ice” that was unstable and slushy, officials said.
“They are on the ice as we speak,” Jim West, chief of the Nome Volunteer Fire Department, said at a news conference Friday.
“The conditions out there are dynamic, and so we’ve got to do it safely and the fastest way we can.”
The Alaskan crash, one of the deadliest in the state in the past 25 years, was the third major fatal aviation crash over a stretch of eight days.
On Jan. 29, an American Airlines flight collided with an Army Helicopter near Reagan National Airport in Virginia, killing all 67 people onboard both aircraft.
Two days later, a medevac jet crashed in Philadelphia, killing all six people on the flight in addition to a person on the ground.
With Post wires
