RISK TAKERS |The team of responders on Saturday, Feb. 25, 2023, start installing anchor bolts that can hold ropes to be used in bringing down from the steep slopes of Mt. Mayon the bodies of the four persons on board the Cessna plane that crashed near the crater of the active volcano on Feb.18, 2023. (Photo from the Cessna 340A Incident Command Post)
LEGAZPI CITY, Albay, Philippines — The bodies of the passengers of the Cessna plane that crashed near the crater of Mt. Mayon were finally retrieved by the emergency responders on Saturday afternoon.
In a Facebook post, Camalig Mayor Carlos Irwin Baldo Jr. said the retrieval team was currently on their way back to the base camp with the bodies of pilot, Capt. Rufino James Crisostomo Jr., mechanic Joel Martin, and Australian passengers, Simon Chipperfield and Karthi Santhanam.
“The incident management team now starts to plan the proper handling of bodies, their drop off point, ground security protocols and turn over to concerned authorities and eventually to the bereaved families,” Baldo said.
Baldo said, in a private message to the Inquirer on Saturday, that the team started the trip down at around 3 p.m. and will take about four hours before they reach the base camp.
Additional teams were also deployed to meet the responders and help them in carrying the body bags.
The remains of the victims will later be turned over to the crime scene investigators for investigation, Baldo added.
The 23-man retrieval team took a week to reach the crash site, which was about 1,800 meteres (6,000 feet) from the base of the volcano, and were using anchor bolts and ropes to relay the bodies over the loose soil and rocks of the steep slope.
Aerial search
The remains 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.
The debris of the plane was sighted in an aerial search a day later, some 350 meters from the summit crater of Mayon Volcano.
Frances Ariola, head of corporate communications of Energy Development Corp. (EDC), said in a separate private message on Saturday that they were already coordinating with the families of the victims.
The pilot and the mechanic were employees of EDC while the Australians were technical consultants, who visited the Bacon-Manito geothermal facility in Albay and Sorsogon provinces before the incident happened.
Baldo earlier said they were hoping that the cold temperature and absence of insects like flies would help preserve the bodies at the crash site.
385 responders
But bringing the remains to the lowland was difficult.
On Saturday morning, the 23 emergency responders were still struggling to set up anchor bolts due to the crash site’s loose and damp soil caused by the heavy rains earlier that day.
Every morning, the 23 responders had to trek for an hour from their base camp, which they set up some 1,000-meter from the crash site, to continue the retrieval operations.
Baldo said five porters were assigned to bring food and water to the teams while the other augmentation teams were also going back and forth the area to deliver needed materials, like the expanded bolts, ropes and rechargeable drilling tools.
A total of 385 responders were mobilized to continue the retrieval operations.
The aerial team from the Tactical Operations Group of the Philippine Air Force remained on standby to assist the ground team.
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