Four people died in a commuter plane crash in freezing rain late Friday near the western Alaskan village of St. Marys, and at least six other passengers were transported to hospitals for medical treatment of multiple injuries.
Residents of the rural village reached the survivors of the crash site two hours after it went down, authorities said Saturday.
Village public safety officer Fred Lamont Jr., who responded to the crash, said all the injured passengers were “beaten up,” with broken bones and other injuries, but he expected all of them to survive.
“I believe they’re all going to be OK,” he said. “There’s a couple that had internal injuries, but they’re stable.”
Two of the injured passengers were evacuated to Bethel soon after the crash, and four more were later evacuated to Anchorage, Lamont said.
The pilot and three of the passengers died when the single-engine turboprop Cessna 208 went down. There was no report of fire. Few other details are known, including the possible cause of the crash, said National Transportation Safety Board investigator Clint Johnson.
“It’s very much in the preliminary stages at this point,” he said.
Hageland Aviation Flight 1453 took off from Bethel about 5:40 p.m. with nine passengers and the pilot, and was scheduled for a stop in Mountain Village before continuing on to Saint Marys, about 470 miles west of Anchorage. The plane crashed around 6:30 p.m., 4 miles from Saint Marys. Rescuers reached the scene at 8:30 p.m., Johnson said.
Pilot Terry Hansen and passengers Rose Polty, Richard Polty and Wyatt Coffee, an infant, died in the crash, Alaska State Troopers said. The survivors included Melanie Coffee, Pauline Johnson, Kylan Johnson, Tonya Lawrence, Garrett Moses and Shannon Lawrence. Their ages and hometowns were not immediately available
The initial count of people on board was unclear because at least one was a lap child, Johnson said.
Saint Marys, like scores of other Alaska villages, is off the state road system. People routinely use small aircraft to reach regional hubs where they can catch jets to complete trips to Anchorage or other cities.
Megan Peters, a spokeswoman for the Alaska State Troopers, said the airplane would have been flying in freezing rain with a mile of visibility and a 300-foot ceiling.
Representatives for Hageland Aviation, part of the Era Alaska group that includes Era Aviation, said the company received word at 6:34 p.m. that Flight 1453 had crashed.
Lamont told the Anchorage Daily News that a survivor from the plane, Melanie Coffee, called the village’s on-call health aide from the crash site. Villagers launched a search by snowmobile and on foot, he said.
Hampered by fog, the 40 to 50 people searching did not immediately spot the wrecked airplane despite speaking to survivors.
Coffee was able to walk away from the wreckage three-quarters of a mile to the village landfill, Lamont said, where she met a search party and guided responders to the crash.
“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “She’s the hero in this.”
Reaching the wreckage will depend on weather and safety considerations, Peters said. No one was at the crash site Saturday morning. “There’s no rush to get there,” Peters said. “There’s no reason to risk anyone’s life because no one’s life is in jeopardy.”
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