Daunting Hunt Begins for Victims of Jet Crash

With all hope for survivors gone, search teams began a daunting battle with the Everglades on Sunday to recover the bodies of 109 people who perished after a ValuJet Airlines DC-9 plummeted into the saw grass and disappeared beneath several feet of water and black muck.

Officials said the isolation of the crash site combined with the dangers and hardships posed by the alligator-and-snake-infested marsh, temperatures in the 80s with high humidity and poor underwater visibility created unprecedented problems for rescue teams.

Those problems also mean that National Transportation Safety Board investigators have scant evidence about what caused the jetliner to crash nose first into the swamp minutes after the crew radioed that the cockpit was filling with smoke.

Officials said it may be days before the first body is retrieved.

“The work that has to be done in the recovery of the bodies is going to be very difficult,” said Transportation Secretary Federico Pena, who inspected the scene from a helicopter Sunday afternoon. “We don’t know where major parts of the airplane are. It’s going to take some time, and be a difficult operation.”

The fuselage of the 120-foot-long jetliner is believed to be submerged in several feet of putrid mud that lies between a sheet of opaque water and a shelf of limestone. The depth of the muck can range from several inches to scores of feet.

With little experience in marshland crash recovery, federal and local officials spent much of Sunday trying to figure out just how to begin. Among the ideas discussed: building a bridge to the crash site from the nearest levee or draining the site after building a containment area with portable dams.

“There is no consensus as to the best way,” NTSB Vice Chairman Robert Francis said at a press briefing Sunday night.

ValuJet’s Flight 592, bound for Atlanta, crashed Saturday afternoon minutes after taking off from Miami International Airport. The plane was climbing to 10,000 feet, about 100 miles west of Miami, when the co-pilot radioed air traffic controllers that smoke was billowing into the cockpit, officials said.

NTSB investigators who listened to recordings of the radio transmissions said there was “a sense of urgency” in the co-pilot’s voice.

The plane was returning to the airport when it disappeared from airport radar screens.

Investigators have located the plane’s two engines but did not expect to find large portions of the plane intact, Francis said.

Barry Schiff, a veteran airline pilot and air safety expert, said the crash “has everybody mystified. . . . The only clues are the smoke in the cockpit and the nose dive.”

Emphasizing that it is still “sheer speculation” on his part, Schiff said there appear to be two possibilities of what happened after the cockpit began to fill with smoke.

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The first, he said, is that the pilots were overcome, either blinded or otherwise incapacitated. If the plane was turning when that happened, he said, the turn would tighten and the aircraft would spiral nose first toward the ground--much as described by a private pilot who witnessed the crash.

The other possibility, he said, is that a fire destroyed key flight mechanisms, leaving the cockpit crew unable to control the plane.

“If I had to guess between the two, I’d have to assume pilot incapacitation,” Schiff said.

Although ValuJet has been undergoing a special Federal Aviation Administration inspection because of repeated safety problems, Pena said it is a “safe airline.” He acknowledged, however, that the inspection was “very unusual.”

Pena, speaking during a news conference at the roadside command center eight miles south of the crash site, said ValuJet has been “responsive and cooperative” in the investigation.

Late Sunday, the FAA announced it was intensifying a review of ValuJet’s safety and maintenance starting today. FAA Associate Administrator Anthony J. Broderick said a seven-day checkup of the airline that had been scheduled for next week has been moved up and will be extended to a full month.

“We welcome the FAA’s scrutiny,” ValuJet spokesman Robert Copeland said late Sunday. “We will continue to work with the FAA to assure the highest level of safety.”

Lewis Jordan, president of ValuJet Airlines Inc., said he took full responsibility for the crash but added there was no indication anything was wrong before the 27-year-old plane took off.

A list of the plane’s past problems showed nothing out of the ordinary, Jordan said.

FAA records showed the crashed jet had returned to airports seven times over the past two years because of various maintenance problems, from an oil leak to loss of cabin pressure.

Jordan defended the airline’s use of a fleet of aging DC-9s, many built more than 25 years ago, and his company’s arrangement to contract for training of young pilots hired at lower salaries.

“A properly maintained airplane that is 25, 26 or 27 years old is as safe as a brand-new airplane coming off the line. I can’t say it any more strongly than that,” he said.

The plane that crashed had a thorough annual inspection in October and a routine inspection four days before the crash.

Flight 592’s pilot, Candalyn Kubeck of Bedford, Texas, had nearly 9,000 total hours of flight time, including 2,073 with ValuJet, 1,697 as a DC-9 captain, officials said.

“Very experienced, very well-trained, very competent,” Jordan said of the 35-year-old Kubeck. “There’s certainly no indication it was any responsibility of the flight crew.”

The first officer, Richard Hazen, a retired Air Force pilot, had 6,146 total flight hours, Jordan said.

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The hunt for survivors was officially called off at mid-morning Sunday after divers shuttled to the scene by airboat--flat-bottom skiffs that are driven across the surface of the water by huge fans powered by noisy engines--reported no signs of life in the 4-foot-deep water where the DC-9 went down. No bodies or parts of bodies have been found. No debris larger than a shoe box has been removed.

Among those few items recovered from the crash scene: baby clothing, a photo album, a seat cushion.

Still missing is the plane’s flight-data recorder.

The NTSB’s Francis said much of the wreckage in the swampy waters is painted blue, which is the color ValuJet paints the rear of its planes, where the flight-data recorder is located.

Finding the blue plane sections gave investigators encouragement that they would recover the recorder, Francis said, adding that special equipment will be brought in to listen for the signal sent automatically when the box is submerged.

Because the DC-9 was 27 years old, the so-called black box recorder will include relatively limited information on the plane’s speed, altitude and heading. Later models record considerably more data.

The site of the crash, while only about 20 miles from the Miami airport, is a swampy plain accessible only by airboats.

Divers in the water reported “zero to none visibility,” said Pat Brickman, a spokesman for the Dade County police.

Officials worried about divers being sucked into the muck or becoming snagged in wreckage, not to mention running into deadly water moccasins and alligators.

There was also concern rescuers might damage evidence that could help determine what caused the crash.

Flight 592 went down eight miles north of U.S. Highway 41, on state-owned land that makes up the Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area. The 671,000-acre wilderness is a conservation area used to hold water for irrigation and to replenish freshwater well fields that sustain more than 4 million people from West Palm Beach to Miami.

The roadway closest to the crash site is a dirt track atop a narrow earthen levee, paralleling a canal and running due north from U.S. 41. The plane is believed to be burrowed into the muck in an area marked by a patch of fire-scorched grass about 300 yards east of the levee.

Normally at this time of year--the end of the dry season--much of the Everglades ecosystem would be covered with only a few inches of water, which moves slowly southward down the peninsula through a river of grass.

But in conservation areas controlled by floodgates and canals operated by the South Florida Water Management District, water levels are often higher than they would be naturally.

That means that federal and local officials face a challenging task in recovering wreckage and bodies.

“I can assure you it’s going to be a long, tedious effort,” said Lt. Luis Fernandez of Metro-Dade Fire-Rescue. Of the team’s inability to find any survivors, or to recover any bodies, Fernandez added: “It’s very frustrating. We are rescuers; we rescue victims. When we can’t rescue people, it hurts us. But there are no victims to save.”

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Several airboat owners showed up Sunday to volunteer for the search operation, but their craft were left idling in the hot sun and 85-degree temperatures as NTSB officials wrestled with just how to mount the recovery. Those familiar with the rugged terrain appreciated the difficulties that lay ahead.

“You take an airboat out there, you can’t just step off or you’ll be up to your ass in muck in seconds,” said Ron Boland, a member of the civilian auxiliary of the neighboring Broward County Sheriff’s Department. “There is unlimited muck out there, which is like a suction. It could be 50 feet deep.”

Boland, 52, said he helped with rescue efforts after the 1972 crash of an Eastern Airlines L-1011 a few miles from the current crash scene. But that crash occurred in an area where the water was inches deep and the wreckage was on the surface. Of the 176 people aboard that flight, 75 survived.

Although Flight 592 presumably was carrying a full load of jet fuel when it went down several minutes after 2 p.m. Saturday, any resulting pollution would be more of a concern to searchers in the water than to the environment, according to experts.

Susan Markley, a biologist with Dade County’s Department of Environmental Resources Management, said the volatile jet fuel would evaporate quickly and affect a relatively small area.

“The primary concern is the effect on people working in there,” she said.

Indeed, after several rescuers in the water Saturday reported skin irritation from fuel and hydraulic fluid, divers on Sunday donned protective suits designed to block the penetration of hazardous materials. They were permitted in the water for no more than 15 minutes at a time.

Times wire services contributed to this story.