SOUTHWEST ALASKA—A floatplane carrying 10 passengers—including guests and guides of Rainbow King Lodge—crashed on takeoff from a small lake near the town of Iliamna on Tuesday morning, killing three passengers and leaving several others critically injured.
According to Alaska Dispatch News the plane departed Iliamna at approximately 6 a.m., leaving before sunrise to head out for a day of fishing. The plane ended up in the trees at one end of East Wind Lake, where the only visible sign of the accident was a wing sticking up amid birch and spruce trees.
Troopers identified those killed as Tony W. DeGroot, 80, of Hanford, Calif., James P. Fletcher, 70, of Clovis, Calif., and James Specter, 69, of Shavertown, Penn.
“They were headed to a fishing site from there,” said National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) spokesperson Clint Johnson. “There were guests, there were guides and there were obviously the crew on board.”
NTSB investigator Millicent Hoidal added that five of the seven survivors were in serious to critical condition. Two others sustained minor injuries and were able to walk away from the wreckage.
Rainbow King Lodge is a longtime fishing operation located in the Iliamna area. Fly Water Travel calls it “a large, easy to reach luxury operation that has rich history in the region.”
The lodge took its website and Facebook page down shortly after the crash.
Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.