ANCHORAGE (AP) – A rescue and recovery dive team was deployed on Saturday after a helicopter with a pilot and three state workers crashed in a large lake on Alaska’s North Slope, officials said.
No survivors have been located. “The official word is, they are missing, presumed fatal,” said the chief of the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) Alaska region Clint Johnson.
An NTSB investigator was also en route to the accident scene on Saturday as plans were being made to recover the wreckage from the water, he said. Challenges with the lake crash site and the availability of another helicopter in the area likely mean the aircraft won’t be raised from the middle of the shallow, 1.6-kilometre-wide lake until today or tomorrow, Johnson said.
The downed helicopter had been chartered by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, the department said in a statement on Friday. It was carrying three employees from the Division of Geological and Geophysical Survey who had been conducting field work.
“DNR is praying for our employees and the pilot, their families, and the DNR team,” the statement said. “We are continuing to await updates from the search and rescue effort.”
Natural Resources Commissioner John Boyle flew to the crash site on Saturday with a North Slope Search and Rescue spotter ahead of the recovery operation, said a spokesperson for the state agency Lorraine Henry.
The Bell 206 helicopter was reported overdue on Thursday night.
A North Slope Borough search and rescue team in a helicopter found debris matching the description of the missing helicopter, the borough’s director of government and external affairs DJ Fauske said in a text to The Associated Press on Friday.
Fauske did not immediately respond to a list of questions sent to him by e-mail on Saturday.
The helicopter’s wreckage was found in the lake near Wainwright, which is about 80 kilometres south of Utqiagvik, the northernmost city in the United States.
