Late Thursday night I received word that we would be part of
a Search and Rescue team entering the Aberdare mountain range at first light. We
would be searching for a small Cessna 206 '5Y-BUG' single engine plane which had not returned
to Wilson airport after picking up two clients in the Laikipia region north west of
Mount Kenya.
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The Aberdare range as the cloud broke up |
There had been activation of the aircraft’s Emergency Locator Transmitter
(ELT) which sends an automatic distress call out to South Africa, and meant it
had definitely crashed. But the signal had stopped, presumably because of low
battery, and getting a pinpoint on its location was proving very difficult. For
one, the best estimate on its location was in a highly populated area to the
west of the range, making the estimate from South Africa very unlikely. People
tend to notice air crashes in their back gardens. So charting a path from the
last known location to Wilson, the most likely location was within the dense
forest of the Aberdare mountains.
There were three souls on board - an extremely experienced
and well known pilot, and two female tourists. There had been no contact or
distress calls indicating they had had trouble. Phone reception up in those hills
would be poor. After my last plane crash experience I was cautiously optimistic we would find them alive,
others were less so. There are tales of pilots walking out of that forest five
days after the search had been abandoned, so while there was still hope of
finding survivors, we were going along. We would also serve as an extra pair
of eyes scouring the treetops.
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Low cloud down to the inhabited areas |
Daylight came and the weather was not good. Dense cloud
clung low to the hills and there was little hope of penetrating up to the
summit. A couple of planes passed over and were unable to find the ELT signal
but they reported the cloud was breaking up a little so we set off. We briefly
went to look and confirmed that a crash over the far west side of the mountains
would not have gone unnoticed, and then advanced up into the hills. Meanwhile,
on ground, supposedly there was a search party
which was entering the areas on the east side. Without a more accurate idea of
where to look, they had little chance of finding anything. The forest is a vast
area to search on foot. A British fighter plane was apparently accidentally
found there 60 years after it had crashed.
Indeed the cloud began to lift and break but, as our pilot
Chris expertly guided the chopper into the forest, my heart sank. It would be
like looking for a needle in a haystack. The forest was so dense that, for the
most part, all you could see was canopy. Subtle damage to the treetops would be
very difficult to spot. Where there were no trees, it was dense bamboo. As I
watched a group of elephants making their way through it, I could see that, if
a plane went down there, the flexible bamboo would just close over and swallow
them.
We stopped off to ask a few National Park rangers whether
they had heard a plane the day before but they said they hadn’t. They also told
us that the cloud was very heavy and all over the hills. The idea of an engine
failure was becoming more and more unlikely. No distress call implied a sudden
event. An event like getting caught in low cloud among steep hills and having
no instruments to guide you. That’s when small aircraft crash into the sides of
mountains.
The pilots used their experience to guess where their
colleague would have flown if he was in trouble and we searched for an hour or
so. Anthony (the AMREF flight nurse) and I hung out of the open helicopter doors in harnesses to get a
good look below us but soon the fuel was running low. We all realised that
without a better plan we had no chance of finding them and headed to Nanyuki to refuel and regroup with the rest of the search party.
The group was tired, really tired. Anthony and I had been up
since 5 but many of these guys, particularly Rob Link, had been up all night
trying to get more information about what had happened to their friend and his
clients. It was heartening to work alongside these guys, obviously upset,
stressed and exhausted, but all the while able to create a dynamic and sensible
strategy to continue the search. There was now more information allowing us to
triangulate a smaller area of the western side of the hills. We had the last
signal from the ELT, which we had already established was probably a couple of miles
off and we had the last radar point in which the aircraft was being tracked by
Jomo Kenyatta airport. Now, in addition the telephone company was able to give
us an approximate location on one of the women’s cell phone. It had been
ringing and ringing but no answer. It was also a very bad sign
and fitted with our growing fear of a sudden lethal event up there. My optimism
of finding anyone alive was fading.
As I listened to Rob and the others drawing up a plan, a
series of promising reports started coming in. The wreckage had been spotted
and the police were walking on foot towards it! We got the location and headed
out immediately. As we moved up the hills again, it became clear that this was
all unsubstantiated rumour and hearsay. On the move, Rob and Chris managed to
work out, it had been heard from someone, who heard it from someone else, and
the trail ran dry. The head of the land-based police search had no idea what we
were talking about. What amazed me was that the rumour had such detail and it
obviously infuriated us all because we had been led on another wild-goose chase
and wasted more time and another tank of fuel.
So we went back to the original plan and divided the area
into grids and using three helicopters scoured the area. I have no idea about
what was going on down on the ground (I certainly saw no evidence of a ground search from the sky) but I’ve since seen some footage on
youtube (see below) indicating they were probably making little progress. But as the hours
ticked by, and we scrutinised each suspicious patch of foliage, it became
obvious neither were we. The cloud rolled in, obscuring the hills, it started
to rain and the light began to fade. We had to give up. We had been searching
for 9 hours straight.
I was called on Saturday morning to let me know a pilot from
the Kenyan Wildlife Service had found the wreckage. There were no survivors. My
biggest fear had been that we had been flying over the site and they had still been
alive, able to hear us but unable to show us where they were. We had to
terminate our search imagining that we had looked but not seen. But my
colleagues tell me, from the look of the wreckage and the bodies, they all died
on impact. Frustratingly the wreckage was in plain view on the very top of the
hills that we couldn’t get to in the cloud, about 2 miles from where we were
searching.
Unsurprisingly this story has been across the news here in
Kenya. Rob Link and the guys from Yellow Wings really led this SAR exercise.
Without their tireless efforts the wreckage never would have been found. The
wildlife service never would have known where to look. Rob, who flew with me
all Friday, was also giving press statements as events unfolded. The impressive
government/police effort can be seen on this news report as well.
The bodies were brought back to Wilson Airport today and the
whole place became subdued in the morning drizzle. The pilot (whose name has
been officially announced) Harro Trempaneu is a well-known and well-loved
figure at Wilson Airport and was the chairman of the Aeroclub of East Africa. It
is a tight-knit group of aviators here and they have all been shocked by these
events.
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Harro Trempaneu |
"Harro, an aviator through and through and a larger than life personality, was one of the industry's prime sources of information, combative, eloquent and never shy to call a spade a spade, which earned him the admiration of most within the aviation fraternity"
I understand the relatives of the two women in the crash have now
arrived as well. It is extremely sad and reminds us all that even the best can
be caught out by bad weather and bad luck in the sky. Rest in peace.