Wreck Of Skydiving Plane Found

The search planes had headed home. The Air Force search helicopter equipped with night vision goggles had ended its day. Still, a Tacoma Mountain Rescue team pressed on in the darkness, following the smell of fuel to the wreckage of a plane in the rugged central Washington Cascades.

Neither the pilot nor nine skydivers aboard appeared to have survived.

Seven of the 10 on board "have been found deceased," Yakima County Sheriff Ken Irwin said in a statement released late Monday night by Yakima Valley Emergency Management.

A 25-member crew remained in the woods overnight and additional crews were mustered at daybreak Tuesday to resume the recovery effort, said Stewart Graham, the sheriff's chief of detectives.

The aircraft was found Monday evening at about 7:40 p.m. at the 4,600-foot level in the White Pass area, reports CBS affiliate KIMA-TV. The tail was missing from the plane, and has not been found.

"I'm told it was a horrific sight and the airplane crashed at a fairly high speed," said Jim Hall, director of Yakima Valley Emergency Management. "It appears that no one survived that crash."

The families of those aboard had been notified, said Hall, who had not been to the crash scene but spoke from a ground search command post near White Pass. The passengers and pilot were not immediately identified.

A National Transportation Safety Board investigation was expected to begin Tuesday, Hall said.

Searchers were able to verify the wreckage by serial number that it was the missing aircraft. The tail section was separated from the rest of the plane and was not immediately located, said Tina Wilson of Emergency Management.

The Cessna 208 Grand Caravan left Star, Idaho, near Boise, on Sunday evening en route to Shelton, Wash., northwest of Olympia, but did not arrive.

The plane had been returning from a skydiving meet in Idaho when it disappeared.

Members of Tacoma Mountain Rescue were among about 25 volunteers still searching after dark Monday in the area where the plane was believed to have gone down.

Based on radar transmissions and a hunter's report of seeing a plane flying low Sunday evening and then hearing a crash, the search was focused on a steep, densely forested area near White Pass, about 45 miles west of Yakima.

Search crews concentrated on a relatively small area of 5-10 square miles along the north fork of the Tieton River.

Six fixed-wing aircraft, the Air Force helicopter and a King County helicopter had searched all day Monday, said Tom Peterson, aviation and emergency services coordinator for the state Department of Transportation. The Air Force chopper flew for a while Monday evening but then was required to land because of a 12-hour duty limit for its crew members, he said.

The Transportation Department handled the air search while Yakima County coordinated the ground search.

One man at a Red Cross center at White Pass said earlier Monday that his 30-year-old son was aboard the plane. He displayed a family photo of the young man skydiving with a brother and sister.

"He worked hard and he played hard — we just want to find him," said the father, who did not give his name.

Elaine Harvey, co-owner of the skydiving company Skydive Snohomish, told The Seattle Times that nine of the 10 aboard were either employees of her business or else licensed skydivers who considered Snohomish their "home drop zone." Skydive Snohomish operates a training school and offers skydiving flights at Harvey Field in Snohomish County, about 20 miles north of Seattle.

Skydive Snohomish had nothing to do with the flight to Idaho or the event held there, Harvey said.

"These people were beloved friends," she told the Yakima Herald-Republic.

The plane was registered to Kapowsin Air Sports of Shelton.

The family-owned company had never lost a plane, Geoff Farrington, Kapowsin's co-owner, said earlier Monday. The plane also had never experienced mechanical problems, he added.

The single-engine plane was built in 1994, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.