Fatal Occurrence 2010P0058
Victim was Experienced Pilot
A local man who was killed in a plane crash near Nelson Monday was an experienced member of the Trail Flying Club, according to one of its members.
He took off from the Trail Airport in his single-engine, four-seat Cessna 172, one of the most common planes in use today and was returning from Nelson at about 3:45 p.m. when his plane went down.
Local pilots frequently fly to Castlegar or Nelson, land, and then return to the Trail Airport for practice, said club member Gord Cook.
Although the lakeside airport in Nelson can be “a bit tricky” to access, it would not have been a problem for someone with the victim’s experience and local knowledge, he added.
Emergency workers were still sorting through the details of the rescue effort Tuesday, and it was not clear how much assistance new cellphone technology was in locating the crash site.
According to Chief Gary Johnson of Greater Trail Fire and Rescue, which runs a regional fire dispatch system in the West Kootenay, searchers were assisted by the new emergency tracking technology that Canadian cellphone carriers have been required to install.
“The fellow was having a lot of difficulty speaking (but the electronic tracking) information was passed onto the ambulance dispatch people . . . The fellow phoned a few times and each time gave a bit different information.”
Despite the tracking information, rescue personnel from a number of communities were dispatched because the pilot first said he was near Glade, between Nelson and Castlegar, and then on a subsequent call indicated he was south of Nelson toward Salmo, Johnson said.
“Unfortunately, he probably had a head injury and was a bit confused. He was in a heavily-treed terrain, way up from the highway. My understanding is that he was right up above Taghum.”
Johnson could not say how accurate the tracking data was, noting that emergency responders are working to a March 31 deadline to get their systems “fully up to speed.”
But he said the very steep, heavily-treed and snow-covered terrain, compounded by dense fog and nightfall would have made the rescue difficult regardless.
“I think they would have had a very difficult time finding this fellow, if they didn’t have the co-ordinates. . . I think they did a great job of finding him in the time they did.”
Staff Sgt. Dan Seibel, of RCMP’s West Kootenay detachment, agreed. He used the cellphone technology in the Lower Mainland before coming to the West Kootenay last year, and “it is far from what you see on television.”
“You can triangulate (using the cell towers) but it is not as easy as it sounds. There were many challenges: the steep terrain, the dense bush, the low fog and cloud cover. When you use the cellphone tower, you may get a 500-foot radius of where it is, and it could be a larger area. In downtown Vancouver, you could limit that a bit quicker than on a mountain outside Nelson.”
Rescue dispatchers kept talking to the man on his cellphone, trying to narrow the search by repeatedly asking him how well he could hear the sirens and search helicopters.
“We were narrowing things down,” Seibel said. “On a roadway it would be a lot easier. In the middle of the bush, the poor victim, with broken legs, clears himself from the crash, not wearing proper clothing. It’s wet and he’s on snow . . .”
A Department of National Defence search and rescue helicopter, that was able to keep flying after local aircraft were grounded, also used infrared technology to peer through the cloud cover.
