***Article Reads as
follows***
(Article #1) Probe Cause of
Disaster
Gander (Staff) -- What
caused the crash of the Russian built turbo-prop aircraft that took the lives of
32 people here Tuesday morning.
DOT
investigators from Moncton, NB, were on the scene yestarday and another crew
flew in from Ottawa in the afternoon to probe the
wreckage.
A flight recorder has not been found on
the Hava bound plane and investigators now feel that there was no recorder on
the aircraft.
Some people around the airport say
that investigators may never determine the actual cause. "That aircraft just
disappeared," said Ganders Mayor Jack Robertson after visiting the scene. The
aircraft had completely disintigrated when it crashed into Union East bog, 4600
feet off the end of the end of Runway 32, believed to be one of the longest
runways in Canada.
Authorities, pending an official
investigation, were unanimous in their opinion that the plane did not explode
until after it hit the ground. They based this assumption on the fact that there
was a long trail of wreckage across the area, about 1300 feet long in the
straight. They felt that a mid-air explosion would cause most of the wreckage to
drop in a confined area.
There is a possibility
that some or all of the parts of the plane will be reassembled in a hangar in
Gander to assist the investigation.
There was a
general feeling that the aircraft crew had some control of the plane during the
crash and were attempting a belly landing on the wide, flat and relatively soft
marsh... but that the plane dipped into a depression through which the CNR lines
runs, tore up the tracks and telegraph poles causing the plane to spin or
somersault. The fact that 36 of 69 passengers are still alive after the tragic
accident has been attributed by some airport officials to the spongy terrain.
The plane split, passengers were thrown onto the muskeg. The marsh was so soft
that in places people sank to their knees as they hurried to reach the crash
site.
PRAGUE (Reuters) -- A Czecholslovakian
delegation has left for Gander, Newfoundland to help Canadian authorities
investigating the cause of the Ilyushin crash there, the Czecholslovakian news
agency Ceteka reported today. A second group of airline officials flew to Gander
to help the survivors of the crash.
(Article #2)
Catapulted off Plane..."I was in
flames"
Gander (Staff) -- "I do not
know nothing about my wife." His face seared and blood stained, his head swathed
in bandages... and the sheets of the hospital bed held off his badly burned legs
and feet by supports, 36 year old Prague biologist Zdenek Landa groped for words
to describe the crash of a Russian-built Ilyushin 18 airliner here
yestarday.
He was the only survivor who would talk
from his hospital bed.
Struggling to tell in
english what had happened on the less than one and a half minute flight that
ended without warning, he said he was sitting in the second row of seats in the
front of the aircraft.
"On contact with the soil,
i was catapulted off the airplane." When he struck the spongy muskeg over when
the wreckage was strewn a 1000 yards. "I was in
flames"
He rolled around on wet undergrowth and
extinguished his burning clothing. Later he was brought by helicoptor from the
crash site to the airport, and then on to the Paton Memorial
Hospital.
At the time reporters spoke with him
briefly, he didn't know what had happened to his wife, who was on the aircraft
with him. He also didn't know what had happened to four geneticists from Prague
who were accompanying them to Havana.
His wife,
believed to be Blanka Landova, is reported to be in extremely serious condition
in the Victoria General Hospital in Halifax. She was brough there with 16 other
crash victims for treatment.
Also in Mr. Landa's
semi-private room at Paton Memorial Hospital was Franktisek Vondrasek, another
crash victim who was suffering from fractures and burns. His son, wife and
daughter also survived the crash. His daughter and wife are being treated at the
Victoria General Hospital in Halifax.
(Article
#3) Austin Garrett hero of rescue
Austin
Garrett, a 45 year old Eastern Provincial Airways Pilot was alerted at 3:20 a.m.
Tuesday that a plane had crashed near Gander International Airport. A half hour
later he was flying a helicoptor to the
scene.
Greeting him was the wreckage of a
Czecholslovakian Ilyushin 18 aircraft which had crashed and exploded during a
takeoff from the airport. For more then 6 hours he flew the dead and injured
back to the airport.
Garrett, a veteran of 26 years
of flying (11 of them with EPA) and another EPA pilot, Harvey Johnson, brought
out the 31 bodies and 29 injured people from the scene. Two later died in
hospital. Garrett could not remember how many trips he made to the scene. He
just kept "flying and flying and flying"
He
recalled that at the start of the rescue operations he flew to the crash site
and back to the airport every 12 minutes. Throughout the morning this was
stepped up to a return flight every six minutes. His float - equipped S-55
helicoptor, which weighs 7200 pounds, can carry 8 persons, including the
pilot. During the rescue operations he was accompanied by Jack Parsons of the
DOT fire department and Earl Parsons, a mines and resources department
employee.
The S-55 is not equipped for night flying
and early Tuesday "it was as pitch..... there was no moon or stars"and the only
thing that guided him to the crash scene was flames from the burning
wreckage.
He landed the helicoptor with the help of
the rescuers who guided him down with flahlights. The smoke was so dense that he
thought it was "a heavy overcast."
He said all the
living were brought out first and "all were brought out by 10:30
a.m."
He remembered that all the injured people were
reaking of jet feul. Their hair was matted with it, he
said.
The second World War Veteran said that on
return trips to the scene he carried all sorts of supplies, blankets, medical
supplies, doctors, RCMP personnel and lumber. Garrett has been flying
helicoptors for the past nine years.
He is married
to the former Katheleen Hefferton, Grand Falls, and they live in Gander. They
have four children, two boys and two girls. Mayor Jack Robertson of Gander
classed him as "the toast of the town, the hero of the rescue."
St Johns Evening TelegramGender: Male
People: Group
Transport: Air
Type: Document
General: The 1960’s