The Coast Guard is searching for a missing man in the St. James Bay area north of Juneau.
A 25-foot Coast Guard station boat was sent out late Thursdsay night, but nothing was found.
An H-60 helicopter from Sitka was reported on scene and searching at about 5:15 a.m. Friday morning. Coast Guard Sector Juneau search and rescue controller Vince Grochowski says the helicopter has about two hours of flight time to search the area.
The missing boater, identified as 52-year old Brian Koelling, was apparently part of a group of four people staying at a cabin in the area. Koelling went out in a Zodiac inflatable to check on crab pots, but he never returned.
The Coast Guard received a phone call from his companions about eleven o’clock Thursday night reporting him as missing.
Handtroller’s cabin is on the northwest side of Shelter Island. (Image courtesy Google Maps)
Updated: May 20, 2013 – 12:30 p.m.
The men on board the aircraft have been identified as pilot Robert Holmes, 39, of Juneau and Garrett Richardson of North Dakota, says AST spokesperson Megan Peters. The two men were picked up by Juneau residents Rick Berning and Kean Nuttall who were heading out to fish around 7 on Sunday morning.
“I was traveling from North Pass, the north end of shelter, to Handtrollers Cove. I saw a splash up ahead and thought it was a whale breaching and continued on up. But as we got to Handtrollers, we saw a dog getting out of the water and with no boat around so I thought that was kind of strange,” Berning says.
“We kinda stopped and look and just then we heard someone yell. But it was out and away from the Handtroller, out in the open water. And we saw ahead and cruised over there and saw two people. They were very cold. We put them in the bottom of the boat and covered them with rain gear and ran them into their cabin.”
Berning says the men were staying with friends in a cabin at Handtrollers Cove. A friend of the men took a boat to retrieve the dog.
Peters says the men were fortunate.
“They’re very, very lucky. A lot of times when a plane sinks in the ocean, the people in the plane are never seen again.”
“They must have been in the water for 5 to 10 minutes. They were very, very cold. They weren’t talking very well,” Berning says.
“Before they left in their friend’s boat they stopped by and said thank you and all that. They were a little bit more recovered at that point.”
Berning says the men made it back to town later in the morning.
According to Peters, NTSB is following up on the crash.
Original Story: May 20, 2013 – 5:25 a.m.
No one was reported injured as a small plane made a water landing and sank north of Juneau on Sunday morning.
According to Alaska State Troopers, the Piper PA-16 took off from the beach in Handtrollers Cove, but the engine failed. The unidentified pilot turned back toward the beach, but the aircraft could not make it to shore and the pilot ended up landing in the water.
Two men and a dog escaped the aircraft as it began to overturn.
Troopers say the aircraft sank in Saginaw Channel in about 450 feet of water.
A nearby boater noticed the men calling for help, picked them up, and transported them back to shore where they were reunited with other members of their party. The pilot and his passenger declined medical attention.
Troopers say the Coast Guard, FAA and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash.
The Juneau International Airport. (Photo by Heather Bryant/KTOO)
Three people were reported on board a light plane that crashed Sunday evening at the Juneau International Airport.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s preliminary accident and incident report identifies two passengers as accompanying the pilot of the M-5 Maule when it crashed on take-off before 7:30 p.m. on Sunday.
Airport acting manager Patty deLaBreure says the single-engine private aircraft seems to have lost control on Runway 26. It went down the embankment on the south side of the runway, past the floatplane pond access road, and it came to rest on the pond bank.
Capital City Fire and Rescue dispatched crews and vehicles for the emergency, but recalled them to the station after determining that there were no injuries that required treatment or transportation to Bartlett Regional Hospital.
“The aircraft stopped just short of going into the floatpond. There was no fire (and there) did not appear to be leaking fuel at the time,” said CCFR’s Captain Roy Johnston.
He said they stabilized the aircraft and turned it over to airfield maintenence.
Since the aircraft came to rest off of the runway, deLaBreure says they’re not aware of the incident prompting any delays in departures or arrivals of other aircraft.
The aircraft has been removed from the area.
The FAA is investigating the incident.
According to the FAA database of civilian aircraft, the certificate of operation for the aircraft, tail number N-378X, has been terminated. Michael Whisenant of Juneau has an application pending as registered owner of the aircraft.
The Coast Guard has found an overdue boater from Haines waiting out the weather in a protected bay north of Juneau.
Lt. Ryan Erickson with Coast Guard Sector Juneau says 57-year-old Scott Pierce left Haines Sunday morning aboard a small sail boat, bound for the Alaska Folk Festival. He was supposed to arrive in Juneau on Monday and was reported overdue by a friend Wednesday afternoon.
Erickson says Pierce was found about 4:45 p.m. Wednesday in William Henry Bay, about 30 miles north of Juneau.
“He’d been there for a couple of days sheltered from weather and it’s pretty much a black hole for any communications, cell or radio, so there was no way that he was able to hear our broadcasts and anybody could hear his,” Erickson said.
He said the Coast Guard Cutter Liberty was looking for Pierce and happened to see the Darshan tucked in the back of the bay. The Coast Guard had also deployed a Jayhawk helicopter from Air Station Sitka to look for the missing vessel.
The 25-foot sail boat has a small outboard motor. Erickson says Pierce has plenty of supplies and hopes to leave William Henry Bay on Thursday, arriving in Auke Bay by mid-afternoon.
When Pierce was reported missing, the Coast Guard notified mariners and the media.
“We found him so we don’t need anybody looking for him,” he said.
Erickson believes Pierce was coming to watch the Folk Festival and was not supposed to perform in it.
The Coast Guard says a crewman from a container ship remains missing on Wednesday after a search overnight in the North Pacific.
The crewman, identified only as an Indian national, is believed to have gone overboard from the 952-foot container ship APL Hamburg. The vessel was about 107 miles north of Kiska about 4 o’clock on Tuesday afternoon when the crew reported the man as missing.
A Coast Guard C-130 aircraft was dispatched to the area and searched for about 2 1/2 hours late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning. The crewman was not found.
Watchstanders at the Coast Guard’s search and rescue command center in Juneau said the APL Hamburg is temporarily remaining on scene and several Good Samaritan vessels are also assisting in the search.
It is not known how the crewman went missing or how he may’ve been carried overboard.
Conditions in the area on Tuesday were reported at 20-foot seas, 40-knot winds, and rain and snow.
The Coast Guard says the vessel was on its way from Asia to California. According to the website MarineTraffic.com, the APL Hamburg was most recently in Xiamen, China.
Joe Masters (center), Keith Mallard (Left), Gary Folger (Right). Photo by Ellen Lockyer, KSKA – Anchorage
In a somber and sometimes emotional press conference Monday in Anchorage, Public Safety Commissioner Joe Masters said that Helo 1′s pilot, Mel Nading, 55, Trooper Tage Toll, 40, of the Talkeetna post, and a body believed to be that of snowmachiner Carl Ober were aboard the downed craft. Masters said the rescue call came in late Saturday night, and at about 10 pm, the helicopter crew radioed that they had located the missing snowmachiner.
“At approximately 2200 hours, radio communication with Helo 1 indicated that they had located the injured snowmachiner, tentatively identified as Talkeetna resident Carl Ober. It was requested that a ground ambulance be waiting at the Sunshine Tesoro in Talkeetna to meet up with Helo 1 to transport Mr. Ober to a hospital for treatment. Helo 1 did not make it to the rondezvous.”
After the helicopter failed to show up, additional Troopers were dispatched by snowmachine and the Air National Guard was called in. Guard searchers located the wreckage of the helicopter about 9:30 a.m. Easter Sunday.
“Two para rescue jumpers were lowered down to the scene, the two AWT troopers were on scene shortly thereafter. An assessment of the scene was conducted, and it was determined that there were no survivors from the crash of Helo 1. Due to the condition of Helo 1 and the on scene investigation, the recovery of remains occurred later in the day. Positive identification of the remains is still ongoing. On this point, we will not speculate as to why Helo 1 crashed. The NTSB will conduct an investigation into the cause and circumstances.”
Masters said that the surviving members of the families of the deceased are now the Troopers’ s top concern, although he would not reveal the survivor’s names at this time. He said the crash represented a great tragedy for the troopers and the search and rescue community as well.
Trooper Director Colonel Keith Mallard said that pilot Nading was hired in 2000 and had flown over 3000 hours and saved hundreds of lives during his time with the Troopers in Alaska. He said that Nading had over 12 thousand hours in the air prior to coming to work for the State Troopers
“In 2012, Mel Nading made over 900 contacts. So, it’s reasonable to think that he flew over 900 missions.”
The crash marks the fourteenth and fifteenth Trooper deaths in the line of duty since 1974. Helo 1 was the only helicopter of its type in the state. A second Helo has been requested by the Troopers, but that depends on a legislative appropriation. The cost of Helo 1 is over 3 million dollars.
