THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2007
NEWS
7A
SKYDIVING ACCIDENT
Final dead found in Idaho crash
BY SHANNON DININNY
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wanda Craig holds a photo of her children (from left in upper photo) Ivy, Kelly, and Casey, on Tuesday, that shows them taking part in a recent skydiving jump, following a briefing from the Yakima County Sheriff's Department about search and recovery efforts near White Pass, Wash., surrounding the crash Sunday night of a plane carrying 10 people.
WHITE PASS, Wash. — Searchers combing through wreckage Tuesday found the last three victims among 10 killed when their plane crashed in Washington's rugged central Cascade Range on their way home from a skydiving event.
Bodies of seven of the 10 people aboard were found Monday. Recovery crews found the rest on Tuesday, said Nisha Marvel, spokeswoman for the state Department of Transportation's aviation division.
"It's rough rugged terrain, and it took about 35 volunteers to comb that recovery area today to find the remaining passengers," Marvel said.
The debris at the remote crash site indicated that the Cessna Caravan 208 went down in a steep nosedive, Yakima County Sheriff Ken Irwin
told a news conference at a command center.
The plane left Star, Idaho on Sunday evening en route to Shelton, Wash., but did not arrive. It had been returning from a skydiving meet in Idaho when it disappeared.
when it disappeared
over the weekend. He doubted that they would have been prepared for an emergency jump, because it was unlikely they were strapped into parachutes and wearing goggles on
"I'm told it was a horrific sight and the airplane crashed at a fairly high speed."
It was not immediately clear what caused the plane to crash.
JIM HALL
Director of Yakima Valley
Emergency Management
their way home.
Fighting back tears, Kelly Craig, whose 30-year-old brother, Casey, died in the crash, said the skydivers on board had made lots of jumps
"We have radar information that shows the rapid descent but other than that we have really no hard evidence as to what caused it," Marvel said.
The plane crashed just east of the crest of the Cascades, about five miles south of White Pass and on the edge of the Goat Rocks Wilderness, said Wayne Frudd of Yakima County Search and
Rescue. The crash site is about 25 miles southeast of Mount Rainier.
"I'm told it was a horrific sight and the airplane crashed at a fairly high speed," said Jim Hall, director of Yakima Valley Emergency Management.
The wreckage was found about an hour after dark Monday by searchers on the ground following the smell of fuel.
A hunter who reported seeing a low-flying plane then hearing a crash said the engine sounded like it was working hard and whining as the aircraft went down, said Tom Peterson, aviation and emergency services coordinator for the state Department of Transportation.
The plane, a single-engine turboprop built in 1994, was found within 200 yards of its last radar ping in rugged terrain at an elevation of 4,300 feet. The crash site measured about 100 feet by 60 feet, indicating that the plane probably went straight down, said Irwin, the sheriff.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash.
Authorities did not immediately release the names of the victims, who ranged in age from 18 to 40, because not all family members had been notified.
The nine skydivers were affiliated with Skydive Snohomish, a company that operates a training school and skydiving flights at Harvey Field north of Seattle.
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HEALTH
The Topamax group cut back to six drinks a day, on average, assuming everyone who dropped out of the study relapsed into heavy drinking. That compared to seven drinks a day for the placebo group.
Pill may replace rehab
"You can come in drinking a bottle of scotch a day and get treatment without detox," said Dr. Bankole Johnson of the University of Virginia, who led the study, which was conducted at 17 U.S. sites from 2004-2006.
The study didn't follow the drinkers long-term, so it's unclear how many relapsed after they stopped taking the pill.
But there were lasting effects for Tom Wolfe, 44, a carpenter from Earlsville, Va., who said he has been sober for two years thanks to Topamax. After years of heavy drinking, he took part in an earlier Topamax study. He felt "a little lightheaded" at first until he got used to the drug. Alcohol lost its enjoyment, strengthening his resolve to quit.
Others cut back.
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"It's been a miracle to me." Wolfe said. "It got the monkey off my back."
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Experts said the drug is likely to appeal to heavy drinkers who would rather seek help from their own doctors, rather than enter a rehab clinic to dry out. The drug costs at least $350 a month, plus the price of doctor's visits.
But side effects are a problem, and it's unclear whether the findings will make a dent in an addiction that affects millions of Americans.
The drug, Topamax, works in a different way than three other medications already approved for treating alcoholism.
Addiction specialists not involved in the study said the findings are promising, although side effects such as trouble concentrating, tingling and itching caused about one in five people to drop out of the study. Drowsiness and dizziness are also problems.
At the start of the study, they drank, on average, 11 standard drinks daily. That's about two sixpacks of beer each day, or two bottles of wine, or a pint of hard liquor. By the end of the study, 27 of the 183 people, or 15 percent, who took Topamax had quit drinking entirely for seven weeks or more. That compared to six out of 188, or 3 percent, in the placebo group.
All volunteers were encouraged but not required to stop drinking.
"The size of the treatment effect
is larger than in most of the other medications we've seen," said Dr. Mark Willenbring of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. "And all the drinking variables changed in the right direction."
The study followed 371 heavy drinkers for 14 weeks. About half were randomly assigned to take Topamax, also called topiramate, in gradually increasing doses. The others took dummy pills.
The study, published in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, was funded by the maker of the drug. Johnson & Johnson Inc.'s Ortho-McNeil Neurologics.
CIVILIAN SHOOTING Security guards open fire on two women in taxi
BAGHDAD — Guards working for an Australian-owned security company fired on a car as it approached their convoy Tuesday, killing two women civilians before speeding away from the latest bloodshed blamed on the deadly mix of heavily armed protection details on Baghdad's crowded streets.
The deaths of the two Iraqi Christians — including one who used the white sedan as an unof
ficial taxi to raise money for her family — came a day after the Iraqi government U.S. officials a report demanding hefty payments and the ouster from Iraq of embattled Blackwater USA for a chaotic shooting last month that left at least 17 civilians dead.
"We deeply regret this incident," said a statement from Michael Priddin, the chief operating officer of Unity Resources Group, a security company owned by Australian partners but with headquarters in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
Priddin said the company would disclose more details of the
shooting after "the facts have been verified and the necessary people and authorities notified" Priddin would not comment on whether his guards killed the women.
But initial accounts — from company statements, witnesses and others — suggested the guards opened fire as the car failed to heed warnings to stop and drifted closer to the convoy near a Unity facility in central Baqhdad's Karraahah district.
It was not immediately clear whether the guards were protecting a client at the time.
Associated Press