| Crew may have perished– officialIt’s been 15 heart-wrenching days since a U.S. twin-engine aircraft and its three-man crew disappeared over the Mazaruni jungle.It has also been a week since the search team picked up any signals from the plane’s Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT), and an official from one of the companies that are coordinating the search and rescue operation says that this may indicate that the crash victims have not survived their ordeal.“The signal has not been heard since Monday, and this may be a sign that they have perished, and we now have to recover them,” the official, who declined to be identified,China Jerseys, told Kaieteur News yesterday.“Even if you are optimistic, you also have to be pragmatic.”And Azad Khan, an official for Prometheus Resources Guyana Inc.,China NFL Jerseys, said that the team is still conducting its ground search in the area where the aircraft is believed to have crashed.“We are still conducting the ground search. We intend to search for the next month; we are in this for the long haul.”He had suggested that the intermittent signals from the ELT could mean that a survivor was switching it on and off to conserve on battery power.But search and rescue expert and veteran pilot Captain Gerry Gouveia believes that the time is “fast approaching” when the search will have to be called off.“It’s very difficult at this time (for the company with which they are employed). They are spending millions searching for these people. They don’t want to give up.“I don’t rule out the possibility of the crew being alive. People have been known to survive in harsh territory.“I don’t believe in giving up, but…there comes a point when a decision has to be taken, and I believe that time is fast approaching.“My heart goes out to the people conducting the search, especially their friends. It is a heart-wrenching thing.”Captain Gouveia described the Mazaruni area where the ill-fated aircraft vanished as harsh territory, and said that any survivors would face several challenges.“The challenges are exposure to the elements, rain,Cheap Jerseys China, being wet in the jungle most of the time,Deion Jones Falcons Jersey UK, running out of supplies; and the biggest thing they may be running out of is hope, if you sense they have stopped searching for you.”Captain Gouveia knows first hand the odds that the missing crew faces.In 1994, Gouveia was flying some eleven miles west of Timehri when he crashed.He spent 15 agonising hours, including nightfall, in the jungle, before he was finally rescued.“The night after they searched and could not find me and the place silent, I felt myself sinking into a state of depression. A sense of hopelessness swept over me, but I felt a burst of excitement the next day when I heard the planes overhead.“I was very lucky. I was testimony to the fact that people can crash and survive.”However, others have not been so fortunate, and their bodies have never been found.He recalled that one pilot crashed in the Mazaruni jungle some two decades ago.Despite a massive air and land search by Civil Aviation Department and the army, he was never found.Another plane, with its pilot and about six European passengers, disappeared while flying between Anna Regina and Mount Roraima.A third disappeared while flying to Kaieteur.The ill-fated twin-engine Beechcraft King Air disappeared two weeks ago while doing uranium survey work for Prometheus Resources Guyana Inc.,Nike NFL Jerseys China, a subsidiary of U308 Corp. of Toronto.Those missing are pilot James Barker,Sale NFL Jerseys, First Officer Chris Paris, and Canadian technician Patrick Murphy. |
