The remains of all 10 people killed when their small plane crashed into ice on the Bering Sea have been recovered, authorities said.
The Nome Volunteer Fire Department made the announcement on its Facebook page Saturday afternoon. Recovery crews had been racing to recover the bodies before a winter storm was expected to hit the region.
“All 10 individuals aboard the Bering Air plane have been officially brought home,” the fire department wrote in the social media post at about 3pm.
Crews were still working on recovering the aircraft, the fire department said.
The Bering Air single-engine turboprop plane was traveling from Unalakleet to the hub community of Nome when it disappeared on Thursday afternoon. It was found the next day after an extensive search with all nine passengers and the pilot dead.
As the community tried to process the deadly event, crews worked swiftly on unstable, slushy sea ice to recover the bodies and the wreckage with less than a day before bad weather was expected. Officials said a Black Hawk helicopter would be used to move the aircraft once the bodies had been removed.
Among those killed in the crash were Rhone Baumgartner and Kameron Hartvigson. They had traveled to Unalakleet to service a heat recovery system vital to the community’s water plant, according to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.
“These two members of our team lost their lives serving others,” David Beveridge, vice-president of environmental health and engineering for the organization, said in a statement. “The loss of these two incredible individuals and everyone else on board the plane will be felt all over Alaska.”
The other people’s names have not been released.
All 10 people on board the plane were adults, and the flight was a regularly scheduled commuter trip, according to Lt Ben Endres of the Alaska state troopers.
A photo provided by the US Coast Guard showed the plane’s splintered body and debris lying on the sea ice. Two people in brightly colored emergency gear circled the wreckage.
“It’s hard to accept the reality of our loss,” the senator Lisa Murkowski said during an evening news conference.
Nome’s mayor, John Handeland, choked up as he discussed the deaths and the response effort.
“Nome is a strong community, and in challenging times we come together and support each other. I expect the outpouring of support to continue in the coming days as we all work to recover from this tragic incident,” Handeland said.
The Cessna Caravan aircraft left Unalakleet at 2.37pm on Thursday, and officials lost contact with it less than an hour later, according to David Olson, director of operations for Bering Air. There was light snow and fog, with a temperature of 17F (-8.3C), according to the National Weather Service.
The US Coast Guard said the aircraft went missing about 30 miles (48km) south-east of Nome.
Radar forensic data provided by the US Civil Air Patrol indicated that at about 3.18pm, the plane had “some kind of event which caused them to experience a rapid loss in elevation and a rapid loss in speed”, coast guard Lt Cmdr Benjamin McIntyre-Coble said. “What that event is, I can’t speculate to.”
McIntyre-Coble said he was unaware of any distress signals from the aircraft. Planes carry an emergency locating transmitter. If exposed to seawater, the device sends a signal to a satellite, which then relays that message back to the coast guard to indicate an aircraft may be in distress. No such messages had been received by the coast guard, he said.
Rescuers were searching the aircraft’s last known location by helicopter when the wreckage was spotted, said Mike Salerno, a spokesperson for the US Coast Guard. Two rescue swimmers were lowered to investigate.
Local, state and federal agencies had assisted in the search effort, combing stretches of ice-dotted waters and scouring miles of frozen tundra.
The National Transportation Safety Board was sending nine people to the scene from various states.
Flying is an essential mode of transportation in Alaska due to the vastness of the landscape and limited infrastructure. Most communities are not connected to the developed road system that serves the state’s most populous region, and it is common to travel by small plane.
Some high school teams fly to sporting events against rival high schools, and goods are brought to many communities by barge or by air.
The plane’s crash marks the third major US aviation mishap in eight days. A commercial jetliner and an army helicopter collided near the nation’s capital on 29 January, killing 67 people. A medical transportation plane crashed in Philadelphia on 31 January, killing the six people on board and another person on the ground.
Bering Air serves 32 villages in western Alaska from hubs in Nome, Kotzebue and Unalakleet. Most destinations receive twice-daily scheduled flights Monday through Saturday.
Unalakleet is a community of about 690 people about 150 miles (about 240km) south-east of Nome and 395 miles (about 640km) north-west of Anchorage. The village is on the Iditarod trail, the route of the world’s most famous dogsled race, during which mushers and their teams must cross the frozen Norton Sound.
Nome, a Gold Rush town, is just south of the Arctic Circle and is known as the ending point of the 1,000-mile (1,610km) Iditarod. The city said prayer vigils would be held on Friday for those onboard the plane, friends and family, and those involved in search efforts.
