Agonising wait for Fox Glacier crash families

Tuesday, 24 November 2015

The bodies of three women and one man have been recovered from Fox Glacier helicopter crash site, but further recovery attempts are still being thwarted by weather.

Police confirmed post-mortems had taken place in Christchurch, although 'formal' identification was still needed.

Weather again hampered efforts to recover the remaining three bodies on Tuesday.

'The weather is still a challenge, we haven't achieved anything on the site [Tuesday],' Inspector John Canning said.

He was hopeful crews could get to the site early Wednesday, but said frustration was growing.

'There are a lot of people here tightly coiled like springs just waiting to go and they can't go up there and do the job they want to do.

'If the weather's clear first thing [Wednesday], we will be up there.'

All seven on board, including the pilot, died in the crash in bad weather during a scenic flight with Alpine Adventures over the Westland National Park glacier just before 11am on Saturday.

They were: Pilot Mitchell Paul Gameren of Queenstown, 28; Andrew Virco, 49, and his partner Katharine Walker, 51, of Cambridge in England; Nigel and Cynthia Charlton, 66 and 70, of Hampshire; and Sovannmony Leang, 27, and Josephine Gibson, 29, both from New South Wales.

Canning was unsure whether the remaining bodies could be recovered.

'We're still confident we can do it but it will largely depend on the environment.'

He had not spoken to the families but said they 'will be feeling it'.

'They will be grieving and it's not going to be pleasant for them.'

FORECAST BLEAK

Recovery crews, who were on stand-by, did not know where the remaining three bodies were, Canning said. 

'We've basically done the easy ones, the next ones, we don't know where they are – we won't know until we get there, on the ground.'

Canning said crews needed a 'substantial' break in the weather to revisit the crash site. 

Meteorologist Chelsea Glue said rain was expected to stick around for much of the week in Fox Glacier, with a break forecast for Friday afternoon.

A severe weather warning for the area forecast heavy rain until late Tuesday, before easing.

'While it will ease off [Tuesday] evening, it's likely it will rain on Wednesday as well as Thursday. Then on Friday there's a front going through, which will bring more rain and more cloud and more restricted visibility for them.'

Once the front moved through, there was a chance for a break in the weather, Glue said.

Senior Constable Brent Swanson, who is leading the body recovery, said crews were 'a little bit optimistic' about getting to the site on Tuesday evening or Wednesday.

'We need a period up to about two hours to go up and do anything,' he said. 

'It looks like it might start clearing late [Tuesday] so that will give us the opportunity to get up and do some preparation work for [Wednesday].'

'If we get that window of opportunity [to recover the bodies] we will. That's a priority, for the families we want to return them home.'

Canning said he did not expect conditions to improve enough to allow a recovery attempt until Wednesday. 

AGONISING WAIT

Families of Fox Glacier helicopter crash victims face were yet to head to Fox as they faced an agonising wait for the recovery of the last of the seven bodies.  

Gameren, who had almost 3000 hours of flying experience, had safely landed the single-engine Squirrel helicopter at a designated spot on the glacier called The Chancellor. He then took off and was headed back to base when the helicopter crashed.

Some of Gameren's friends had gathered in Fox, but his family and those of the killed tourists were yet to head there. 

None of the tourists' families had booked flights or accommodation yet, Canning said. 

'They haven't committed to coming. I expect with our liaison we will hear before they come but we haven't heard that yet, they're just thinking about it.

'If we had some movement in the next 24 hours they will start coming, but I think that like is they are sitting and waiting at present.'

Four bodies were recovered during an hour-long break in the West Coast weather on Sunday, including all three women who were on board and one of the men. 

Mitch Gameren's step-father, Kelly Bray, believed the crash would have happened 'pretty quickly'. 

'We have heard the debris is spread over a big area and reports are that it was high impact, but from the photo that's been released it seems the rotor blades are still intact.

'We have experience in the area and to us it looks like it lost power and gone down and there's not a lot of time to call mayday.' 

Formal autopsies on the four recovered bodies would likely happen in Christchurch on Tuesday.

Police had identified the four recovered bodies from photos and DNA testing, but would not say who they were. 

**READ MORE:

* [Tributes flow for helicopter pilot Mitch Gameren

*](http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/74277281/tributes-flow-for-pilot-in-fox-glacier-crash) [Air accidents near NZ glaciers

](http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/74275935/air-accidents-near-nzs-glaciers)* [Community left 'hurting'

*](http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/74277338/fox-glacier-community-left-hurting-by-helicopter-tragedy) [Tourist group in dark over fatal crash

](http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/74279602/fox-glacier-tourist-group-in-dark-over-helicopter-crash)* Australian crash victim 'a big-brother figure'

* Family, friends and colleagues pay tribute to British tourists**   

The site was treacherous, Canning said. 

'I'm informed the glacier at the site of the crash is moving up to a metre a day. That's substantial and that's why we've got to take it safety first.'

Canning said Gameren made no mayday call. Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) investigator Peter Northcote said it was possible a mayday was simply not heard.

Prime Minister John Key, who is Tourism Minister, said significant changes had been made in adventure tourism in recent years in an effort to improve safety. 

CRASH SCENE 'COMPLEX'

Northcote said nothing had been ruled out as a possible cause.  

While Gameren's family believed the photograph showing the helicopter's rotor blades intact suggested it lost power, Northcote said that did not tell the whole story.

'We will wait until we've got physical evidence before we start making that sort of supposition,' he said.

'We've not yet sighted all wreckage of the aircraft – it may be underneath wreckage that we can see, but we don't know that yet.

'From our point of view, we need to wait until we can access and retrieve as much of the physical evidence as possible and then start to see what that might start to tell us in terms of the accident sequence.

'Nothing's in and nothing's out in terms of what we're looking at.'

Canning said a team of some 40 people, including land search and rescue (LandSar) and alpine cliff rescue staff, were on standby for breaks in the weather to try recover four bodies still at the crash scene.

The crash scene was highly treacherous at the top end of the glacier. The glacier was uneven and moving, with 20-metre crevasses, and blocks of ice bigger than buildings. 

A recovery bid would include establishing up a staging point before cutting tracks in the ice. Equipment would be set up before recovery crews 'gingerly' got into their work.

'That will be a slow, methodical and safe way we go about doing that.' 

Northcote said: 'It's going to be a complex scene investigation because of the nature of the terrain. It's heavily glaciated, there's crevasses, there's effectively piles of large chunks of ice.'

NZ 'SLAPDASH' WITH AIR SAFETY - DAD

The family of a British man who died in a New Zealand plane crash five years ago have criticised the country's 'slapdash' attitude to the safety of tourists following the deaths of four more UK nationals on Saturday.

Bradley Coker, 24, from Farnborough, Hampshire, was killed in 2010 when the light aircraft in which he was flying to take part in a skydive crashed at the Fox Glacier Aerodrome.

Last month, TAIC admitted key parts of the plane's wreckage had been buried three days after the crash, ultimately limiting the commission's ability to determine the true cause of the accident.

Coker's father, Chris, spoke after four Britons were among the seven killed in a helicopter crash on the Fox Glacier on Saturday.

'If the helicopter in Saturday's crash has been completely destroyed it is unlikely we will ever find out the true cause of the crash as the TAIC cannot be trusted to investigate accidents properly, ' Chris Coker, 63, said.

Under the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC), it was not possible for nationals and tourists to sue for negligence, which Coker believed was the major reason why such tragic accidents continued to happen here.

'There is no right for the families of the victims to sue for negligence so no one is held accountable,' he said. 'Since Bradley's crash not a lot has changed in New Zealand, which means his death was for nothing.'

Those who saw last Saturday's helicopter crash site said debris was spread over several hundred metres, with the main part of the helicopter wedged between huge blocks of ice.

TAIC investigator Peter Northcote was 'confident that we've got the resources on the scene now to do the wreckage retrieval and start the examination, which will continue in our Wellington facility once the wreckage is retrieved'.

Prime Minister John Key said he did not think the accident would affect the adventure tourism industry. 'Most people are aware there is risk when you get in a helicopter,' he said. 'But there needs to be a full investigation.'