4 passengers traveling on the plane, collapsed last Saturday around the Mayon volcano in the northeast of the Philippines, found dead near the crater after days of complex search due to explosion hazard and bad weather. “We found four bodies at the crash site,” Tin Florence of the Camalig emergency center in Bicol, the province where the volcano is located (on the island of Luzon), confirmed to EFE.
The dead are the plane’s pilot, Rufino James Crisostomo Jr., its mechanic Joel Martin, Simon Chipperfield, both Filipino and Australian, and Karthi Santhanam, consultants to the Philippine company Energy Development Corporation (EDC).
The accident occurred near the crater that crowns Mayon volcano last Saturday. A Cessna 340 plane bound for Manila crashed collapsed A few minutes after takeoff in the state of Bicol. Emergency crews were searching for passengers near the crater of the volcano, one of the most active volcanoes in the Philippines, in a “risky” operation due to the danger of explosion, lack of visibility and bad weather prevailing in the area. area since the accident.
Penny Wong, the Australian Foreign Minister, expressed her regret from visiting Fiji: “On behalf of the Australian Government, I would like to express my condolences to the families of Simon Chipperfield and Karthi Santhanam, both from my city of Adelaide, as well as two Filipino citizens”.
The remains of the Cessna plane were found last Sunday at an altitude of about 350 meters from the top of Mayon crater (2,421 meters above sea level). The rescue operation involved several expert local climbers in the area who began climbing the volcano last Tuesday. inability to reach the scene of the accident by helicopter or land vehicle.