Tragedy in the Aberdare Mountains

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. 

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.

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgRM2VO8L4k

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.

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.