Updated 8:50 p.m. - Search for Missing Plane Continues Through the Night

Posted

    MORTON — A helicopter search for a twin-engine Cessna and its three occupants who went missing Monday morning in the Cascades a few miles north of Glenoma ended about 5 p.m. Monday due to inclement weather, low visibility and rugged terrain.

    Search-and-rescue crews in seven or eight vehicles are driving logging roads in the area tonight with sophisticated direction-finding equipment that will allow responders to triangulate where the Cessna may have crashed in steep terrain which the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office has whittled down to about two or three square miles near the east fork of the Tilton River. The direction-finding equipment was not available during the day.

    However, search-and-rescue crews on the ground — 30 to 40 people — were able to pick up slightly audible pings from the Cessna’s electronic-locating transmitter using hand-held equipment. Ground crews ended their search when night fell and will resume Tuesday morning.

    The three occupants of the plane have been identified as Chehalis-Centralia Airport board member Ken Sabin, Rod Rinta and Dr. Paul Shenk. Sabin piloted the plane. Rinta, a laser technician, is a Lewis County resident. Shenk is a surgeon from Woodland. Rinta and Shenk have both been employed by Pacific Cataract and Laser Institute since 1993. PCLI owns the plane.

    By 5 p.m. at the Morton Airport, Rinta’s brother, Don Rinta, and about eight friends and family members of the Rintas had arrived at the search party’s command post for an update on the search.

    “He was just going to work,” Don Rinta said of his brother, who flew regularly with PCLI’s surgery teams from headquarters in Chehalis to the company’s 17 sites across the Northwest and New Mexico.

    The plane had departed from the Chehalis-Centralia Airport and was heading toward the Lewiston-Nez Perce County Regional Airport in Lewiston, Idaho, when it reported having engine trouble over the Gifford Pinchot National Forest between Packwood and Morton. Before 7:30 a.m. it reported losing power to an engine. That’s when the plane lost more than 10,000 feet of altitude — it was cruising at 15,000 feet — in little more than a minute’s time before climbing back to 12,000 feet.

    “He had to have had two engines,” said Bob Bozarth, a friend of pilot Ken Sabin’s and a fellow pilot who arrived at the Morton Airport with an all-terrain vehicle in tow and determination to help search for his friend and fellow passengers. “They are the salt of the earth.”

    Napavine resident Bozarth, who owns his own excavation company, said Sabin is an experienced pilot and certified instrument instructor who teaches pilots how to fly at high altitudes. Bozarth figured Sabin experienced engine failure but wouldn’t speculate on what the cause might have been or why he plunged and ascended so dramatically.

    “He wasn’t doing it for the fun of it,” Bozarth said.

    Air traffic control lost radar contact with the plane at 7:44 a.m.

    Approximately that same time, a logging crew in the area where the plane disappeared reportedly heard an aircraft banking hard followed by a thud that sounded like a crash, according to Lewis County Sheriff Steve Mansfield.

    Mansfield later said the aviation division of the state Department of Transportation was able to determine the Cessna had reversed its direction and was headed west toward Chehalis, flying on the same path it flew east, when it lost radar contact.

    Mansfield said the suspected area of the crash is between 2,400 and 4,000 feet elevation, where about three to four inches of snow fell throughout the day.



    The plane is colored white.

    “Right now it’s all about finding that plane and helping these people,” Mansfield said early Monday afternoon.

    By air, volunteer Dan Foster and a couple of his employees searched for the plane from his helicopter, a Jet Ranger, which is typically seen flown by TV news crews but which Foster flies for his Chehalis-based business, Farm and Forest Helicopter Service.

    “These are my friends,” Foster said late Monday, minutes before changing his mind about ending the search for the day and relaunching toward the suspected crash zone about 10 miles northeast of the Morton Airport.

    Foster said he flew for about six hours while searching for the Cessna.

    Around 1:30 p.m., while re-fueling, Foster said he thought he had spotted some unusual debris in the forest which was worth re-checking. At that point the weather was breaking and a cloud bank covering a north ridge was dissipating.

    However, not long after Foster relaunched his helicopter, the weather worsened. At one point he said he landed it on a logging road for about an hour while a snowstorm passed by.

    Foster said he’ll continue his volunteer search Tuesday morning.

    A Navy helicopter also helped with the preliminary search but was called off and headed back to its base after reporting mechanical problems. The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office couldn’t say how long it had helped or if it would return Tuesday, but said they were working on getting additional help. 

    A spotter plane could have helped with the search but was called off because of the rough weather.

    Sheriff Mansfield said the search could have a better chance at success once the plane is triangulated to a particular mountainside or ravine.

    “Sometimes you have to be right over it to see it,” Mansfield said.

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    Adam Pearson: (360) 807-8208