Wreckage recovered from fatal crash

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.