Fatal plane crash in central Alberta

BASHAW, Alta. – Two people are dead following a plane crash in central Alberta this weekend.

The four-seater small engine plane flew out of British Columbia’s Lower Mainland and was en route to somewhere in central Alberta, when it disappeared from the radar just before 11 p.m. Friday night, according to Sgt. Geoff Buxcey, of the Bashaw RCMP detachment.

Because of the remote location of the crash, and the fact that an emergency beacon had not been activated, it took search crews more than four hours to find the crash site. A rescue-coordination centre helped by giving RCMP the general direction of the crash, but it wasn’t until 3:20 a.m. local time that seven officers from three nearby rural detachments found the fiery wreckage in a farmer’s field southeast of Bashaw, Alta.

"One of the officers detected an odour of an electrical fire and that alerted him to this area," said Buxcey. "When our members came on scene it was engulfed in flames."

"Basically a fire on the service of the plane is all there was when we got here," added Stettler firefighter, Mark Dennis.

On Saturday morning, an excavator dug deep into the ground to retrieve crumpled pieces of the plane which were embedded 10 feet below the earth’s surface and spread across a 256 square-metre area because of the impact of the crash. Traffic Safety Board Operations Investigator Mike Tomm says the plane appears to have crashed at a near-vertical angle, which may indicate a high speed.

By afternoon, two bodies were recovered from underneath the wreckage. The names of the two victims have not been released, but Bashaw resident, Trevor Sorken, believes the victims to be his cousins – B.C. brothers Dean and Lee Soken, who were expected in Killam this weekend for a wedding. Sorken says the men were supposed to arrive in the area around 11 p.m. on Friday, and were both experienced in the air.

The TSB is still investigating what caused the crash. It was raining and snowing in the area last night, but it’s still unknown if the weather played a factor in the crash.

With files from Laurel Clark and the Edmonton Journal.