By Kelly Long
Consolidated News Service
03-15-2008
ST. CLAIR COUNTY — Authorities and rescuers worked through growing rain showers Friday afternoon to secure the scene of a fatal crash of a Navy T-34C aircraft on Chandler Mountain near Steele in northern St. Clair County.
Both of the plane's pilots died in the crash. Names of the victims are being withheld pending notification of next of kin, a Navy press release said.
A press release from Lori Aprilliano, command support officer for the Naval Air Station Whiting Field near Pensacola, Fla., said the plane was based at Whiting. The T-34C Turbomentor, a two-seat training aircraft assigned to Training Squadron 6, was conducting routine flight training when the plane crashed at 2:45 p.m., Aprilliano said in the release.
On Chandler Mountain — an area famous for its natural beauty and tomato farms — sheriff's deputies and the Steele Police Department, worked Friday afternoon to secure the mountainside crash scene off Loop Road near Horse Pens 40.
At around 3:45 p.m., a Chinook military transport helicopter passed over Chandler Mountain and hovered over a small column of smoke rising from below a mountain ridge. The smoke and small flames could be seen from Beason's Cove Road.
By 5 p.m., members of the specialized high-angle rescue unit from the Springville Fire Department were working to safely access the wreckage clinging to the mountainside.
Authorities would remain at the scene until military investigators arrive from Pennsylvania, Sheriff Terry Surles said.
Central Dispatch Coordinator Bill Richvalsky said the report of a possible plane crash came in to emergency dispatch at about 2:45 p.m.
"A couple of people called it in and said they heard a big boom and saw fire and smoke on the mountain," he said.
One witness in the area of the crash said they had heard the plane flying around and heard the sound of trees falling. They didn't hear the plane after that.
The area reportedly was extremely foggy at the time of the crash. Authorities have not said if weather was a contributing factor in the crash.
Whiting Field has 14 outlying fields used by trainers, with some as far north as Evergreen, Aprilliano said.
It is not known how long it will take to recover the plane.
"We have dispatched personnel up there to set up a command post until the aircraft is brought back," Aprilliano said.
Daily Home staff writer Joseph Thornton and the Pensacola News Journal contributed to this article.
