Canadian plane crash victims died while awaiting rescue
Monday, January 8, 2007
Source: CBC News
At least two of three men who died after a plane went down last week in Canada's North West Territories survived the initial crash, the lone survivor told investigators.
Coroner Percy Kinney told CBC News on Friday that Ndilo resident Alfred Tsetta, who is recovering in an Edmonton hospital, has given his account of the Wednesday morning crash of the Arctic Sunwest Charters' Cessna 185 ski plane.
"He believes at least two of the passengers survived the initial impact but succumbed at some point later on," Kinney said.
Although the plane was reported missing Wednesday, bad weather hampered the search and it was not located until Thursday afternoon, about 20 hours later.
"We're going to do post-mortems on all three of the victims to determine if they died from their injuries or cold exposure or a combination of both," Kinney said.
Transportation Safety Board investigators, who wrapped up their visit to the crash site on Blachford Lake south of Yellowknife on Friday, will be looking at why the emergency locator device didn't work properly.
Just before the crash which killed him, 36-year-old pilot Jason Watt called his Yellowknife base to say he'd encountered bad weather and was planning to spend the night at the Blachford Lake Lodge.
Searchers found the ski plane Thursday about two kilometres from the lodge.
The other two passengers who died were 41-year-old Albert Doctor, of Ndilo, and Patrick Alexander, 53, originally from Eckville, Alta, all in Canada.
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