Crash victims' remains retrieved

BAYOMBONG, Nueva Vizcaya , Philippines  – Police-led search teams recovered late yesterday afternoon all the seven bodies of passengers and crew of the ill-fated light plane that crashed on April 2 in Baggao town in Cagayan.

Chief Superintendent Roberto Damian, Cagayan Valley police director, said the bodies were taken to the landing zone several hundred meters above the crash site in the jungles of Sitio Baying, Barangay San Miguel.

The remains, Damian said, would be transported by helicopter today to Tuguegarao airport and be subjected to laboratory identification tests at the police regional office in Camp Adduru, Tuguegarao City.

Those to be identified were the bodies of Captain Tomas Yañez and his co-pilot Captain Ranier Ruiz, and their passengers Councilor Abelardo Baggay, SPO2 Rolly Castaños and Celestino Salacup, all from Maconacon, Isabela; barangay chairman Joel Basilio of Sapinit, Divilacan town, also in Isabela; and James Bakilan of the Divilacan local government. 

“(The) bodies were entangled in the wreckage (which was strewn at an altitude of more or less 5,200 feet) necessitating the transport of special tools,” said Damian, also the head of the Regional Disaster Coordinating Council spearheading the retrieval efforts.

The search teams only located the remote crash site on April 14, almost two weeks after the Chemtrad plane went missing while on its way from Tuguegarao airport in Cagayan to Isabela’s coastal Maconacon town on April 2.

The twin-engine Islander plane was believed to have slammed into a mountain ridge in Baggao while trying to avoid bad weather on the way to Maconacon town.

“Low cloud cover and rains in the crash site hampered retrieval operations,” said Damian. – With Cecille Suerte Felipe, Sheila Laude