Stunned by the second major tragedy involving Arenal Volcano in four days, rescue workers this week battled brutal terrain, harsh weather conditions and the constant fear of eruption in their five-day effort to recover the remains of the pilot, copilot and eight foreign passengers of a domestic flight that slammed into the mountain in north-central Costa Rica Aug. 26, killing all aboard.
SANSA Airlines’ single-engine Cessna Grand Caravan, flight 1644, crashed into the northeast summit of the 1,600-meter (5,250-foot) Arenal only minutes after taking off from the El Tanque Airport near the popular tourist destination of La Fortuna, 130 km. northwest of San José, at the volcano’s northeast base.
The regularly scheduled flight, which originated at San José’s Juan Santamaría International Airport, was en route to the north Pacific beach town of Tamarindo. Pending an investigation, Civil Aviation investigators refused to comment on possible causes of the crash (see separate story).
Victims were Costa Rican Karl Acevedo, 22 pilot; William Badilla, 34 copilot; longtime resident Terry Pratt, 51, a Canadian citizen; Swiss tourists Ymke Shoep and Silvia Reusser, both 23; and five U.S. tourists: Helena Bohmer, 36, and her husband Steven Bohmer, 44, of Orlando; Judy Consolazio, 56, and her husband Frank Consolazio, 57, of Smithtown, New York; and Christopher Damia, 36, of Hillsborough, California, whose parents own a home at Flamingo Beach on Costa Rica’s north Pacific coast.
The plane crashed some 200 meters from the volcano’s crater only four days after a violent eruption sent clouds of boiling mud, gas and ash billowing down the volcano’s north face, resulting in the death of a Costa Rican tour guide and second-and third-degree burns to two U.S. tourists (TT, Aug. 25).
Arenal is the country’s most active volcano, attracting tourists with its periodic rumbling and spectacular nighttime eruptions of red-orange lava. Last week’s eruption was the most violent in decades.
Confusion reigned early in this week’s search effort. Early false reports said the plane had crashed into nearby Cerro Chato, a dormant volcano near Arenal, and that residents of the area had heard cries for help in English. Rescuers spent futile hours combing the wrong mountain well into the night.
Modern tracking technology finally showed the way. Vernor Piedra, a Civil Aviation air traffic controller at Juan Santamaría Airport, told The Tico Times that the Cessna was equipped with an Electronic Localizer Transmitter (ELT) that revealed the exact coordinates of the crash site.
Upon impact, the ELT transmitted a location signal that was captured by the satellite antenna of a control station in Denver. In minutes, the crash coordinates were relayed to a sister station in Honduras and forwarded to Costa Rica.
Despite the swift transmission, Sansa, a domestic division of Central American carrier Grupo Taca, didn’t report the flight officially "disappeared" until 1 p.m. During a 10 p.m. press conference the day of the accident, Sansa’s Ozman Fonseca would admit only that the flight’s situation was "uncertain."
Guided by the satellite coordinates, firefighter David Bolaños and area mountain guide Alberto Alvarez were part of the first rescue team to reach the site around 9:45 a.m. Sunday.
"I’d heard those earlier (erroneous) reports and expected to see survivors," recalled the good-natured Alvarez, adding that he was unprepared for the horrifying scene they encountered.
Mountain-rescue expert Bolaños said the plane apparently rebounded off a nearby ridge before coming to rest on a nearly vertical slope covered with sandy, unstable earth, reachable only after a grueling three-to-four-hour uphill hike from the Los Lagos tourist center at the base of Arenal’s northeast face that served as the operation’s nerve center.
According to Bolaños, the copilot and another unidentified man were inside the fuselage, while the other victims, three of whom were still belted into their seats, were scattered about a 200-meter radius of the wreckage. The two most distant bodies were recovered some 20 meters from the crater’s edge. Searchers found two wristwatches among the debris; both had stopped at 12:10 p.m.
Rescue workers, exhausted from the trek to the site, also had to contend with toxic volcanic gases emerging from the porous earth, as well as the fear of landslides and eruptions. Several admitted that Protti’s death was fresh in their minds.
"This has been a very difficult, high-risk operation," said Bolaños, 39, a 20-year veteran of mountain rescue.
Heavy cloud cover and torrential rains slowed the rescue effort to a crawl, forcing its suspension at 5:30 p.m. Sunday.
Early Monday found some 40 rescue workers at the crash site, but bickering between the Red Cross and the Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ) over how to proceed combined with continued heavy clouds to further hamper efforts.
The site, close to last week’s volcanic mud and ash flow, was visible from Los Lagos during fleeting breaks in the clouds. The spectacle attracted crowds of onlookers, some with picnic lunches, who lined the roadsides, trying to catch a glimpse of the wreckage.
Taking advantage of every break in the clouds, helicopters from the Public Security Ministry, Channel 7 News, and Panamanian police flew over the zone, eventually locating a relatively flat spot about an hour’s hike from the crash site that could serve as a landing pad.
Some rescue workers took shovels to the spot, creating a flatter surface to facilitate landing. Others went to work preparing the remains to be carried by foot to the improvised landing pad. By late Monday, the body of victim Judy Consolazio had been airlifted off the mountain.
Five more were removed Tuesday and the remaining four Wednesday with the help of a specially equipped Panamanian "bubble" helicopter and expert pilot Nicolás González, 52, who hovered over the landing pad and lowered a special transport net attached to a 30-meter cable. Rescuers on the ground loaded the bundled remains into the net and observed as the chopper carried them to the Los Lagos base, where the bodies were flown by Public Security helicopter to El Tanque airport for transfer by plane to San José.
As the copter lifted the final body off the mountain Wednesday morning, aided by special colored smoke to guide González to the landing pad through dense clouds, rescue workers clapped and shouted.
"If the Costa Ricans are happy with our work here, then I’m happy too," the pilot humbly told the daily La Nación.
The fatal flight left San José’s Juan Santamaría International Airport at 11:40 a.m. destined for the north Pacific beach town of Tamarindo.
Pilot Acevedo made a stop in La Fortuna to drop off the flight’s 11th passenger, Japanese tourist Masaru Hamatani, 52, who wanted to visit the town for two days of volcano-watching. The plane departed La Fortuna’s private El Tanque airport, located in a rice field owned by a prominent cattle family, at noon, but crashed minutes later.
According to media reports, Hamatani, who speaks no Spanish and little English, didn’t learn of the fate of his travel mates until around 6 p.m., when he found out by chance from an area travel agent who happened by the Hotel San Bosco, where the tourist was staying. Hamatani refused to speak with The Tico Times this week.
Two of the victims, Helena and Steven Bohmer, were married Aug. 21 and were here on their honeymoon. They’d arrived in Costa Rica hours before boarding the plane that crashed. Sources close to the investigation said Helena, a former Miss Uruguay beauty queen before becoming a U.S. citizen, was five months pregnant. Her husband was a Florida physician.
Another victim, Christopher Damia, was in the process of applying for Costa Rican residency. Damia’s parents own a home at Flamingo Beach on the north Pacific coast. The victim’s mother, Cecilia, told The Tico Times this week that her son had been planning to drive to Flamingo after arriving by plane from California, but opted to fly when his car suffered a mechanical problem.
Swiss friends Reusser and Shoep arrived in Costa Rica the week of Aug. 13 from Ecuador, where they’d both acquired a leptospirosis bacterial infection, apparently from ingesting impure food or water. Press reports said they were hospitalized eight days at San José’s private Clínica Bíblica. Both recovered and were released Aug. 25, the day before the accident.
Judy and Frank Consolazio were here on vacation. He worked for Citibank and she for a law firm.
The crash was the region’s third tourist-related tragedy in the past four weeks and the second in as many weeks for San José-based Horizontes Jungle Tours.
Crash victim Pratt was advertising and marketing director for Horizontes. Only days before her death, she served as the company’s press spokeswoman following the Aug. 23 death of Horizontes’ much-loved guide Ignacio Protti, who died of internal injuries suffered during last week’s violent Arenal eruption. The guide heroically rescued his two U.S. clients – a mother and her 8-year-old daughter (see related story).
U.S. tourist Jerry Probst, 50, drowned on the rain-swollen Peñas Blancas River July 26, when his raft overturned. La Fortuna was the starting point of Probst’s river tour (TT, July 28).
In an interview with the daily La República, Tourism Minister Wálter Niehaus this week called for more regulation of high-risk activities such as volcano- viewing and whitewater rafting. Likewise, Presidency Minister Danilo Chaverri urged the Nacional Emergency Commission to clearly mark safe viewing limits at Arenal.
This week’s five-day rescue effort united the Red Cross, National Emergency Commission, Public Security Ministry police, Judicial Investigative Police, firefighters, Civil Aviation and a four-man team of Panamanian rescue experts that included pilot González.
(Chakris Kussalanant and Jeffrey Van Fleet contributed to this report.)
