Members of the team tasked to find the Cessna plane that crashed on Mt. Mayon on Feb. 18 make their way toward the wreckage on a gully near the volcano’s summit crater on Thursday. The team had to brave steep, slippery and rocky slopes to retrieve the bodies of the four people aboard the plane. —PHOTO COURTESY OF CESSNA 340A INCIDENT COMMAND POST
LEGAZPI CITY – The remains of the four victims of the Cessna plane crash were finally retrieved by the emergency responders on Saturday afternoon (Feb. 25), seven days after the incident.
In a Facebook post, Camalig Mayor Carlos Irwin Baldo Jr., incident commander, said the team were “currently on their way to the base camp” in Barangay (village) Anoling near the base of the volcano.
Baldo, however, did not specify which base camp in the area the retrieval team will go to.
The 23-man team deployed at the crash site, about 1,800 m (6,000 feet) from the base of the volcano, used anchor bolts and ropes to relay the cadaver bags from the steep slopes and terrain.
Remains of the onboard pilot, Capt. Rufino James Crisostomo Jr.; his mechanic, Joel Martin; and their two Australian passengers, Simon Chipperfield and Karthi Santhanam, were found by the experienced mountaineers and government responders on Feb. 22, about 350 meters (1,148 feet) from the volcano’s summit crater.
The Cessna RPC340 bound for Metro Manila went missing minutes after it took off from Bicol International Airport in Daraga, Albay, at 6:43 a.m. on Feb. 18.
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