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Crash touches all, premier says
Victims of First Air plane disaster include three Yellowknife residents

Jack Danylchuk
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, August 24, 2011

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE / RESOLUTE
The Northwest Territories legislature added its voice Monday to the outpouring of condolences that echoed across the North in the aftermath of the First Air crash Saturday at Resolute Bay.

NNSL photo/graphic


This is the debris field from First Air flight 6560 that crashed on its approach to the Resolute airport Saturday. There were only three survivors out of 15 on board on the flight. - photo courtesy of Transportation Safety Board of Canada


PASSENGERS ON BOARD FLIGHT 6560
  • Yellowknife's Ann Marie Chassie, 42, was a mother of two teenagers who also worked part-time as a nurse. She served 22 years as a flight attendant with First Air.
  • Flight attendant Ute Merritt, 55, of Yellowknife had five grown children. She is survived by her husband, Jim, a captain of First Air's Hercules aircraft.
  • First officer David Hare, 35, who lived in Yk, was the father to three young daughters. He also leaves behind his wife, Jane.
  • In Leduc, Alta., the pilot of the flight was also being remembered as a family man. Blair Rutherford, 48, leaves behind a wife, Tatiana, a First Air flight attendant since 1997, and two young children.
  • Among the passengers were Cheyenne Eckalook, 6, and Gabrielle Pelky, 7, granddaughters of Aziz 'Ozie' Kheraj, owner of the South Camp Inn and other businesses in Resolute Bay. Gabrielle survived, Cheyenne did not. Pelky was released from the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa on Monday. She had a broken leg and some cuts to her head.
  • Robin Wyllie, 48, lived despite having his chest "crushed" in the crash, RCMP Supt. Howard Eaton said, while 23-year-old Nicole Williamson had her leg broken. Both were in hospital in Ottawa on Monday.
  • The remains of the victims, Manitoba civil servant Marty Bergmann, New Brunswick residents Raymond Pitre, Lise Lamoureux and Steve Girouard, Randy Reid, a cook at the South Inn in Resolute Bay, and Chesley Tibbo, a carpenter from Harbour Mille, N.L., and Michael Rideout, also of N.L. will be flown to Ottawa for autopsies.
Source: RCMP/First Air

MLAs stood in silence after Premier Floyd Roland acknowledged that the impact of the crash of flight 6560 "touches us all. Our lives and communities will be forever changed."

The crash claimed 12 lives, including three crew members from Yellowknife. Three passengers survived and Roland recognized "the miracle of those lives that were spared, and the contributions and quick response of military personnel and volunteers under very trying circumstances."

The flight originated in Yellowknife, a charter shared by the South Camp Inn and the Polar Continental Shelf Program, carrying passengers on the final leg of journeys that started in communities scattered across the country, from Newfoundland to British Columbia.

Witnesses saw the Boeing 737 aircraft disappear in heavy fog as it approached the airport from the south. There was the flash of an explosion, and when the fog cleared, remains of the cabin, fuselage, and tail were strewn along a debris field that swept for 400 metres across a hill 1,500 metres from the runway.

RCMP Supt. Howard Eaton said it was a miracle that anyone survived the crash.

"Two of them were walking when the rescuers got there, and that's an unbelievable story when you think about the impact and how much death and destruction were around them."

Hundreds of military personnel were in the area for the massive military exercise Operation Nanook, which was to include an air crash simulation. Government of Nunavut employees and the RCMP also responded to the crash.

RCMP released the names of the victims Monday, as investigators from the Transportation Safety Board began the task of finding out why the plane crashed. It could be months before there are any answers.

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