Investigators to probe plane crash that injured several passengers
One of the 22 survivors of a northern Saskatchewan plane crash says he knew something was wrong shortly after takeoff.
“The plane was just moving up and down, side by side,” said Willie John Laurent, a band councillor with the Fond-duLac Denesuline Nation who was on the plane. “The last I remember is it touching the ground. That’s the last I know.”
Laurent, his wife, Helen, and their daughter were among the 22 passengers — including an infant — and three crew aboard a West Wind Aviation turboprop that crashed on takeoff near the community of Fond du Lac.
No one was killed, but at least five people were seriously injured and required medevac attention.
Darryl McDonald said his 70-year-old mother, Ernestine, suffered a broken jaw and facial injuries when the plane went down about a kilometre from the airstrip. His sister also suffered injuries to her leg.
Laurent remembers hearing screaming as the plane went down.
“People yelling, yelling, yelling,” he said. “Then you smell a lot of fuel, a lot of jet fuel. Good thing there was no spark.”
A picture of the crash site shows the damaged aircraft partly on its side in the trees, with a wing jutting up in the air at a 45-degree angle, but there’s not yet any insight into what caused the crash.
In the immediate aftermath, members of the 900-person community came together to help those who were injured.
Chris Fountain, who’s a guard at the RCMP detachment, was playing radio bingo when he called his work to see if he needed to go in on Wednesday night.
“I was phoning the police to ... find out if I had to guard or not,” he said. “I actually got Regina telecoms and they told me that the members are really busy, there’s been a plane crash. So I just hung up the phone and went for a ride.”
Fountain jumped on his Skidoo and drove about four minutes into the bush to go find the plane.
“When I got to the site, one of the members told me to take the stewardess out, because she was in shock. So she jumped on the skidoo and I hauled her out.”
Then he returned and helped get one of the pilots back to the health clinic.