Bodies removed from fiery Peachland float plane crash

By

PEACHLAND (NEWS1130) – The coroner has now removed all three bodies from the fiery wreck of a float plane which crashed near Peachland on Sunday.

The victims will be taken to Vancouver General Hospital to confirm their identities, although the pilot has been named as Colin Moyes of West Vancouver.

The Transportation Safety Board will now remove what’s left of the plane and try to figure out why it crashed.

Bill Yearwood with the TSB says they’ll take out what they can from the charred scene and examine it in a lab.

The de Havilland Beaver didn’t have a flight recorder or black box on board.  Yearwood says small planes like it are not required to, but the TSB would like them to.

He says it would make investigators’ tasks a lot easier.

“There is a push to do that because these recording devices are getting simpler and more cost-effective,” Yearwood says.  “They’ve come down from $30,000 to $9,000 or less.”

He says a lot of information has been lost because the plane burst into flames.
     
“These (smaller, cheaper recorders) have been developed, they’re available.  There is some resistance, as you can imagine, in (installing) the…audio-visual recording devices,” Yearwood adds.

He says the TSB protects recording audio and video recordings and they would not be released to the public.

The plane crashed shortly before 7 p.m. on Sunday night, about 25 kilometres outside of Kelowna on the return leg of a trip from Pitt Meadows.

Crews spent a good portion of yesterday taking chainsaws to trees in the area, in an attempt to clear a path so the coroner could safely get to the wreckage.

Top Stories

Top Stories

Most Watched Today