OSO — There were no survivors of a small plane crash in a heavily wooded, rugged area just north of the Snohomish County line Sunday night.
The rented Cessna 172 was enroute from Roche Harbor on the San Juan Islands to Auburn when it went down in a remote area near Bald Mountain, north of Oso and Arlington, said Skagit County sheriff’s chief Will Reichardt.
The victims were the pilot, Brenda L. Houston, 47, and her daughter, Elizabeth M. Crews, 10, both of Enumclaw; and Dr. Virgil Becker, 54, an Auburn physician, Reichardt said.
Houston was a pilot for United Airlines, her husband confirmed.
“I lost my baby,” said Tom Crews, Houston’s husband and the little girl’s father. “But she’s with her mother. She loved flying with her mother, and the two of them are flying together. They’re happy. We lost half our family.”
Crews said he and Houston met when both were pilots for Pan Am Airlines. She continued to fly with United Airlines, he said.
Becker was a board-certified orthopedic surgeon at Cascade Spine Center.
Teams from the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash. It’s not known if weather was a factor, Reichardt said.
Crews next week plan to hoist the wreckage out of the area and bring it to a hangar for further investigation, said Eliott Simpson, the NTSB investigator in charge.
He said it will take up to nine months to determine what caused the crash.
The plane apparently went down around 8 p.m. Sunday, said Mike Fergus, an FAA spokesman.
Around 9:30 p.m., a Whidbey Island Naval Air Station Knighthawk helicopter was dispatched to the area to help, Navy spokeswoman Kim Martin said.
“We came in and were able to get in and get close enough to actually pinpoint the location of the crash,” she said.
A search-and-rescue airplane with the state Department of Transportation and a Snohomish County sheriff’s helicopter already were in the area looking for the plane. The Navy crew used night vision goggles to locate the precise area of the crash. A team was lowered to the crash and confirmed there were no survivors, Martin said.
It was too dark and the area too rugged to recover the victims Sunday, Reichardt said.
On Monday morning, a ground crew trained in aircraft recovery efforts was hiking to the scene. Search vehicles only could get within a mile of the crash location.
Sunday’s crash is the sixth fatal airplane crash in Washington this year, according to NTSB records. The crash brings the death toll from airplane mishaps this year to 11 statewide.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Reporter Jackson Holtz: 425-339-3437 or jholtz@heraldnet.com.
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