Bodies May Never Be Found, Relatives Told

Losing his father aboard the Alaska Airlines flight was the hardest thing Steve Cuthbertson said he’s ever faced. But that grief was compounded Wednesday when he learned from crash investigators that there might well be no body for him to bury.

The revelation made him and his girlfriend, Michelle Guisto, weep. “It was awful,” she said.

“He was my best friend. He was an all-around, 100% devoted father and grandfather,” Cuthbertson said afterward at a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport where they and other relatives of crash victims are staying.

The Northern California resident said he and others had blood samples drawn in hopes of finding DNA matches to reunite families with recovered remains. Information gleaned from detailed interviews with families will also be used in the identification effort, said Alaska Airlines Chief Executive Officer John Kelly, who visited with the mourners at the hotel. Investigators are also asking for dental and medical records.

Cuthbertson said he was told that only four bodies have been found.

He and Guisto were among 100 family members and friends who began arriving Tuesday at the hotel. They were issued white picture badges with “Flight 261” displayed in bold black letters.

The families were given private briefings by the National Transportation Safety Board, the Coast Guard and other investigators Wednesday morning.

Some family members said they came to say goodbye to loved ones, to find some closure. A memorial service set for Saturday may help provide that.

Today they will board buses to visit a beach near the recovery operation, to see up close what some say they’ve only seen on television or in nightmares. The Coast Guard is also arranging for a boat to accommodate relatives who wish to see the crash site up close.

“We have to do that, we have to go to the beach,” said Cuthbertson. They have to see the site in order to really accept the reality of the tragedy, to begin grieving, he said.

Members of the Ost family, who lost five relatives in the crash, agreed. Janis Ost-Ford, 36, came down from Santa Cruz with her husband, Greg Ford, not only for her own closure, but for that of her brother’s two children from his first marriage, Ashley, 12, and Alex, 10.

Connecticut.

Killed along with her brother, Bob Ost, was his wife, Ileana, an Alaska Airlines customer service agent; their 4-month-old daughter, Emily; Bob and Ost-Ford’s mother, Jean Permison; and her companion, Charlie Russell.

They were returning from a celebration of Permison’s 73rd birthday, said Ost-Ford, who planned to have them over for a follow-up birthday dinner Tuesday.

“You always thinks this happens to other people,” said Greg Ford, who, as was his brother-in-law, is a firefighter in San Mateo. “I just keep visualizing what happened in the final minutes of that flight.”

Permison and Russell were at the center of the close-knit Ost clan, he said. Ford says his wife keeps asking him how they are going to keep the family going without them. Ost-Ford was at home Monday night when her mother’s best friend called to tell her a plane from Puerto Vallarta had crashed.

Afterward, “I was glued to the TV, not wanting to believe it,” Ost-Ford said. She tried to get through on Alaska Airlines’ toll-free number but said all she got was a busy signal.

At 7:15 p.m, an airline official called with the grim news.

Her “emotion ran from shock to hysteria,” Ost-Ford said. The first time she was able to sleep again was early Wednesday.

Early that afternoon, her husband, looking pale with dark circles beneath his eyes, stopped at the hotel bar, ordered a drink and downed it in several gulps.

He does not usually drink, the firefighter said, but after listening to the NTSB, Coast Guard and coroner briefings, “I need a drink.”

His wife was visibly upset over what she learned about the state of the bodies. “I just want to know that our families did not suffer and that it was just fast,” she said, crying.

Both found comfort in one thing Wednesday: television images of the makeshift memorials of flowers, cards and candles placed at the water’s edge.

“I think it’s going to take a really long time to get over this. . . . I miss my family,” said Ost-Ford, adding that dozens of her relatives would be in Los Angeles today to offer each other support.

Kelly, the airline CEO, said family and friends are welcome to stay in Los Angeles for as long as necessary to achieve closure.

Anguished families were told that if their loved ones’ bodies are not found soon, it could be weeks and perhaps months before the coroner could issue death certificates. If no identifiable remains are retrieved, the coroner will issue “presumptive death certificates,” Kelly said.

Without death certificates, many will be unable to collect life insurance and other payments.

Alaska Airlines will provide any family that needs it some financial assistance for expenses such as mortgages and health insurance until the certificates can be issued, Kelly said.

“We don’t want that to be a concern,” he said, adding that airline officials will turn their attention to those issues soon after today’s visit to the beach. “We are going to try and bridge the gap between now and death certificates.”

He said Alaska is doing everything, big and small, that it can to help families, regardless of cost. The airline has assigned two caregivers to be with each grieving family night and day. Airline officials also have arranged to fly several pet dogs and cats to Los Angeles to help comfort their bereaved owners, and they have filled prescriptions, arranged for baby-sitters, “anything they want,” Kelly said.

In Ventura County, three families who lost loved ones sailed to the wreckage site nine miles off the coast Wednesday morning and held a tearful memorial service punctuated by a salute from sailors lining the deck of a U.S. Coast Guard cutter. Eighteen people were aboard a sport fishing boat from Port Hueneme.

Some relatives of crash victims were staying at the Holiday Inn on San Buenaventura Beach closer to the crash site, but most kept to themselves and local authorities helped keep the news media away.

“No comment,” one woman replied before darting into an office at the hotel, one of the tallest buildings in Ventura. On most days, the island near which the crash occurred can easily be seen from its balconies.

At one point, sheriff’s deputies and police officers escorted a man and three women from the Holiday Inn’s conference room to an elevator.

“I’m not sure it was to run interference,” said Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Eric Nishimoto. He said his agency was not providing security for the crash victims’ families.

“The hotel called asking for assistance, because it was concerned media was overly intrusive,” he said.

Times Community News reporter Holly J. Wolcott also contributed to this story.