4 killed in Beaver crash in NW Ontario

[rotornut]

May 19, 2004. 01:58 PM

4 killed in crash north of Sioux Lookout


CANADIAN PRESS

KENORA - Four people, including three Americans, are believed dead following the crash of a float plane at Fawcett Lake about 110 kilometres north of Sioux Lookout, investigators said today.
The names and hometowns of the victims haven't been released, but an official with the Transportation Safety Board in Winnipeg said three are from the United States.

Peter Hildebrand said police divers hoped to recover the bodies this afternoon. A pilot and three passengers were on board.

The crash late yesterday afternoon occurred about an hour after the Beaver float plane took off from Pickerel Arm Camp at Sioux Lookout, heading for Fawcett Lake, Sgt. Dean Barclay of Kenora OPP said.

The victims were reportedly travelling to a lodge on the lake.

An hour later, a second plane took off from the same camp. When the second plane arrived at the lake, the pilot didn't see the first plane, police said. He dropped off his passengers and returned to Sioux Lookout, where he contacted emergency personnel.

A Canadian Forces search-and-rescue team travelled to Fawcett Lake from Winnipeg in a Hercules aircraft, a spokesman said. Rescuers searched the lake and shoreline from the air, the Kenora Miner and News reported.

Around the same time, the passengers from the second plane took a boat out on the lake and located the downed Beaver.

[rotornut]

Recovery underway at site of plane crash By Janet Gibson

Miner and News Staff - May 20, 2004

One of the floats from the Dehavilland DHC-2 Beaver which crashed into Fawcett Lake Tuesday afternoon is on top of the water, Sioux Lookout OPP spokesman Const. Marc Gaudet said Thursday morning.

The lake is about 190 kilometres north of Sioux Lookout.

OPP divers with the underwater search and rescue team will slip into the water this morning to recover four bodies from the plane.

Pilot Frederick Charles Illsley, 29, of Winnipeg and three fishermen - Kenneth Melvin Schremp, 49, of Edgerton, Wisonsin; Eric Dixon, 39, of Delaware, Ohio; and Aaron Thomas Rogahn, 26, of Kaukauna, Wisconsin - flew to an outpost cabin on the lake Tuesday at 5 p.m. from Pickerel Arm Camp in Sioux Lookout. Two of the fishermen were employed by American Family Insurance headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin.

The single-engine plane was reported missing after a second plane from Pickerel Arm Camp flew to the lake and didn't see the first plane.

Gaudet said Sioux Lookout OPP Sgt. Marc Loranger and two officers flew Wednesday to Fawcett Lake to investigate the crash.

The OPP divers arrived at the lake Wednesday around 4:30 p.m., then returned to Sioux Lookout where they spent the night, Gaudet said.

They flew back to the lake today at 8 a.m., likely with two investigators from the Transportation Safety Board.

The divers will dive off 14-foot fishing boats belonging to the outpost camp, Gaudet said.

First, they must secure the boats so the boats don't move.

"That's where their air supply comes from," Gaudet said.

Transportation Safety Board lead investigator John Hannah and technical investigator Brian Stratton, both from Winnipeg, will stay at the lake "as long as it takes" to decide if they will conduct an investigation, said spokesman John Cottreau.

If there are no new safety lessons to be learned, they will return home.

Gaudet said there is an eight-person cabin at the lake where the police and investigators can stay.

There are just two outpost cabins on Fawcett Lake.

The other cabin belongs to L&M Sioux Lookout Fly-In Camps.

L&M has a group of fishermen at the lake, said employee Shane Adams, albeit a few miles from the site of the crash.

It's a decent sized lake, Adams said, full of walleye and northern pike.

[pigboat]

Anybody know what the weather was like?

[rotornut]

Ugly
http://www.climate.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca/climateData/hourlydata_e.html?timeframe=1&Prov=ON&StationID=3969&Year=2004&Month=5&Day=19

[dartman]

who was the operator of the beaver that crashed?