By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
The missing plane from Chehalis has been found, the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office is reporting.
Search and rescue crews on the ground spotted part of the wreckage and are currently making their way towards it, Chief Civil Deputy Stacy Brown said. She got word of the find at 10:30 a.m.
It was located about nine and a half miles northeast of Morton in wooded, steep terrain, according to Brown. Snow is falling at the crash site, she said.
It’s unknown if there are any survivors. They have no estimates of how long it will take to reach the site.
“It’s really slow going, they’re walking across mountains basically,” Brown said.
The search resumed at daylight, about 7 o’clock this morning, according to Brown. More than 70 people assisted, she said.
The Cessna 340, owned by the Chehalis-based Pacific Cataract and Laser Institute, lost radio contact with air traffic control about 7:45 a.m. yesterday after the pilot reported one engine was down.
The pilot is Ken Sabin and the two passengers are Rod Rinta and Dr. Paul Shenk, according to Debbie Eldredge of Pacific Cataract.
Pacific Cataract keeps a handful of planes at the Chehalis-Centralia Airport to fly surgeons to satellite clinics.
The twin-engine plane was heading for Lewiston, Idaho.
Sabin is a Chehalis resident who flies as a contract pilot for the company. Forty-three year-old Rinta is a laser technician and also lives in Chehalis. Dr. Shenk, 69, lives in Woodland. He is an opthamologist and surgeon, according to Eldredge.
Search and rescue teams were out until about 8 p.m. last night driving the back roads with a portable direction finder box, trying to pick up a signal from the aircraft.
Dan Foster, of Farm and Forest Helicopters out of Napavine, searched from the air yesterday with two of his employees.
Brown said a helicopter went up for a short time this morning again, but the weather was too dangerous for it to stay in the air.
The command post for the search effort is at Strom Field in Morton.
More soon.
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This news story was updated at 12:45 p.m. today Tuesday Oct. 26, 2010