WAILUKU, Hawaii (AP) — Investigators began Monday to piece together the parts of a tour helicopter that crashed on Maui, killing all seven people on board. The wreckage was removed Sunday from the 2,900-foot level of a mountainside deep in
WAILUKU, Hawaii (AP) — Investigators began Monday to piece together the parts
of a tour helicopter that crashed on Maui, killing all seven people on
board.
The wreckage was removed Sunday from the 2,900-foot level of a
mountainside deep in Iao Valley. It was scattered 200 feet down a steep slope,
said George Petterson, an investigator for the National Transportation Safety
Board.
“It’s very fragmented,” Petterson said. “There is fire damage to
it.”
The bodies of the seven victims were retrieved Saturday by rescue
teams that had to rappel down to the crash site by helicopter.
The Blue
Hawaiian Helicopters twin-engine AS355 crashed Friday during a 35-minute tour
of the West Maui mountains.
The helicopter crashed about 26 minutes into
its flight, according to a transponder recovered from the chopper, Wayne
Pollack of the National Transportation Safety Board said Sunday night.
The
transponder shows the crash occurred two miles west of Iao Needle, at an
altitude of 2,900 feet, Pollack said.
The helicopter departed Kahului
heliport at 9:54 a.m., headed northwest, then traveled counterclockwise around
the island until it was about 10 miles west of the airport.
The helicopter
was in Iao Valley, traveling at 3,700 feet, by 10:19 a.m. A minute later, the
chopper dropped to 3,100 feet and crashed a short time later, Pollack
said.
Data on Friday’s weather conditions, the maintenance history of the
chopper and the experience of pilot Larry Kirsch also are being studied by the
NTSB.
Representatives of the helicopter and engine manufacturers are taking
part in the investigation, which will involve starting to put the helicopter
back together in a hangar at Kahului heliport, Petterson said.
A
preliminary report on the cause of the crash should be ready by the end of the
week, he said.
Kirsch, 55, identified by police as the pilot, was a Vietnam
veteran with more than 12,000 hours of flight time and had been with the
company more than a year, said Patti Chevalier, co-owner of the
company.
Newspapers in New Jersey identified four of the victims as a
family from the town of Shrewsbury. They are William John Jordan, an economic
professor at Seton Hall University; his wife, psychiatrist Jan Herscovitz, and
their children, Max Jordan, 16, and Lindsey Jordan, 15.
Earlier news
reports had identified the woman as Jan Hortivick.
Also killed were two
lifelong friends from Texas: Natalie Prince, 14, of Fort Worth, and Whitney
Wood, 14, of Burleson.
Police have yet to release an official list of the
victims, and won’t until autopsies are completed.
Known to colleagues as
“Jack,” Jordan had taught at Seton Hall since 1977, and Herscovitz was a
psychiatrist in Shrewsbury.
“Dr. Jordan was a professor who was extremely
dedicated to his craft,” said Karen Boroff, acting dean of the university’s
Stillman School of Business. “He was a very knowledgeable teacher who acted as
a mentor to his students. This is a tremendous loss for Seton Hall University,
our students and his colleagues.”
Police in Shrewsbury on Monday referred
calls to the Maui Police Department.
In Texas, Don Streeter, grandfather of
Natalie Prince, said his only granddaughter was the apple of his eye. He last
saw at the airport, before she left for the weeklong trip to Hawaii.
“I got
a big hug and a kiss from her,” Streeter said. “That’s the last time I saw her.
It hurts.”
Streeter said Natalie and Whitney had been best of friends since
the age of 4, and remained nearly inseparable even though they lived in
different towns and went to different schools.
“They’re almost like
sisters, maybe better than sisters, because they never fought,” he
said.
Terry Wood, Whitney’s father, said the girls were always
together.
“You couldn’t pry them apart with anything,” Wood said.
Wood
was apprehensive about letting his daughter make the trip with the Prince
family, but relented after his daughter said she badly wanted to go.
And
now his worst fears were realized.
“That’s one call you pray you never will
receive,” he said. “We just lost two daughters.”
Each of the victims
suffered “severe impact injuries,” according to Maui County medical examiner
Dr. Anthony Manoukian. There was indication of a minor fire, but none of the
victims suffered significant burns, he said.
Positive identification of the
passengers will be more difficult because of the severity of the injuries and
the fact that three are girls all about the same age, Manoukian
said.
Dental records were due to arrive Monday, and officials hoped they
would help to speed up the identification process.
It was the first
accident involving a Blue Hawaiian tour helicopter since the company began
operations in 1985.
It was Hawaii’s third major aircraft crash in 11
months. On Sept. 25, a tour plane crashed on the slopes of Mauna Loa on the Big
Island, killing all 10 people on board. On May 10, a private jet slammed into a
hillside while approaching an airport on Molokai, killing all six people on
board.