Juneau

National Transportation Safety Board inspector Chris Shaver says two of the passengers from Friday’s Wings of Alaska plane crash were able to get out of the aircraft on their own.

“I believe two passengers made it outside the airplane afterward and then they helped a third passenger get out.”

Shaver says he’s so far interviewed two of the four survivors.

Shaver was able to see the crash site Saturday with the help of a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter basket. He says the Cessna 207 is in two pieces.

“The airplane separated basically just forward of the wing, so the cockpit area and the engine separated and it was its own piece. The rest of the fuselage and the wings and the tail all remained as one piece.”

He said the forward piece of the plane was sitting about 20 feet in front of what he thinks is the initial impact point, a large spruce tree. The second piece was inverted at the base of the tree. Shaver says some of the seats had broken out during the impact.

The wreckage from the crash is being kept in a private hangar at the Juneau airport. Shaver says the investigative team will spend about two days looking over it. The engine will be sent to Anchorage for inspection.

Shaver anticipates the preliminary accident report will come out early next week.

 

Jury selection is underway in the trial of former Wrangell doctor Greg Salard, who is accused of possessing child pornography.

Seventy-seven prospective jurors filled out written questionnaires Monday morning in U.S. District Court in Juneau.

Salard was arrested in October and charged with three felonies for alleged receipt, possession and distribution of child pornography.

Salard was employed as a family doctor by Alaska Island Community Services in Wrangell and served under a contract with Wrangell Medical Center, the community’s hospital.

Juneau police say they have arrested a man who eluded officers a week ago.

Derick Nathaniel Skultka, 32, was apprehended about 7 o’clock Sunday night after leading officers on a foot chase at the 6600 block of Glacier Highway.

Skultka was wanted on three felonies related to burglary and assault cases.

Last Monday, officers tried to stop Skultka for allegedly speeding in a vehicle. He ran from the vehicle and escaped into some brush between homes in West Juneau. Later that same day, he allegedly crashed a vehicle in the McDonald’s drive-thru.

Former Assemblyman Marc Wheeler has set up a fundraiser for local volunteer group Friends of the Flags. Wheeler has so far raised more than $500 of the campaign’s $1,000 goal.

The funds will support Friends of the Flags, “and their courageous decision to replace the Mississippi state flag with the Mississippi Magnolia flag,” according to the website.

Friends of the Flags is a volunteer group that organizes and maintains the all-states’ flags display in downtown Juneau during the summer. After a monthlong debate over removing the flag—which has an image of the full Confederate flag in its upper left corner —the flag was removed last Saturday morning.

The funds will be donated to the group after paying the cost of replacing the flag, approximately $120, according to the website.

Wreckage of a plane that went down Friday afternoon 18 miles west of Juneau was being picked up Sunday for further investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Wings of Alaska flight 202 from Juneau to Hoonah crashed into a mountain north of Point Howard on the mainland, killing the pilot. The Cessna 207 was carrying four passengers who survived the crash.

The purpose of the National Transportation Safety Board is to perform an in-depth investigation to determine probable cause of the crash. Clint Johnson, chief of the Alaska Regional Office in Anchorage, describes it as a process of elimination.

“We look at three main areas when we get on an accident site – man, machine, environment. Man being the human performance portion, machine being the mechanical and the environment is obviously the weather. So right now, none of those three areas have been discounted at this point,” Johnson says.

NTSB investigator Chris Shaver spent Saturday at the crash site, which is steep and tree-covered.

Johnson says the investigative team for the wreckage includes representatives from the airframe manufacturer, Cessna Aircraft Co., and the engine manufacturer, Continental Motors. That process takes a few days.

Johnson says Shaver is also working closely with Wings of Alaska.

“That is a part of the investigation. Chris will probably be in town for the next 2 to 3 days, if not longer than that, conducting a number of interviews as far as management personnel, other pilots that knew this pilot, dispatch personnel, there’s a host of people,” Johnson says.

Wings flight 202 departed Juneau on Friday around 1 p.m. for what was supposed to be an 18-minute flight to Hoonah. The Juneau Police Department received a 911 call from someone on the plane around 1:20 reporting the crash.

The pilot was 45-year-old Fariah Peterson of Birmingham, Alabama. Her body was recovered Saturday afternoon and will be sent to the State Medical Examiner Office for an autopsy.

The four surviving passengers are 64-year-old Ernestine Hanlon-Abel of Hoonah, 57-year-old Humberto Hernandez-Aponte and wife 60-year-old Sandra Herrera Lopez of Juneau, and 15-year-old Jose Vazquez of Puerto Rico. They were all initially brought to Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau. Hanlon-Abel and Herrera Lopez were medevaced to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. As of Sunday afternoon, both were in serious condition in the intensive care unit.

The weather near Point Howard Friday afternoon was similar to the weather in Juneau – low clouds, light rain and patchy fog, according to a meteorologist at the National Weather Service.

Wings of Alaska cancelled all flights on Saturday, the day after the crash. Service resumed on Sunday.

Johnson says a full NTSB investigation takes 9 months to a year. He says a preliminary accident report will come out sometime this week.

A Wings of Alaska Cessna 207 flying from Juneau to Hoonah crashed into a side of a mountain Friday afternoon, killing the pilot. The U.S. Coast Guard, Juneau Mountain Rescue, Alaska State Troopers and Temsco Helicopters coordinated efforts to rescue the four surviving passengers. The crash site was north of Point Howard at 1,330 feet above sea level.

In this video, a Coast Guard Air Station Sitka MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew lowers rescue personnel to the site of the plane crash and hoists survivors for transport to medical care. The survivors were all initially brought to Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau.

The video is provided by the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Sitka.