Volunteer divers join search

Manila, Philippines -  Foreign deep sea divers have joined in the search for Interior and Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo and two others who went missing after their light aircraft crashed off Masbate last Saturday.

Officials said the divers volunteered their skills and equipment for the search and recovery operations.

Chief Superintendent Marcelo Garbo, Central Visayas regional police director, said Korean volunteers were led by South Korea’s honorary consul to Cebu.

Garbo said the Koreans, with their own deep-sea diving equipment, took off from Mactan in Cebu for Masbate on the new Philippine Air Force (PAF) helicopter.

British dive experts, who own a diving school in Malapascua Island in Cebu, also scoured the seabed of Masbate for the ill-fated Piper Seneca aircraft carrying Robredo. American deep-sea diver Matthew Caldwell also showed up to help in the operations.

Caldwell had helped in previous Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) operations to recover bodies from the sunken wooden-hulled passenger ship Catalyn B.

The Catalyn B collided with steel-hulled fishing vessel Anatalia on Christmas Eve in 2009.

There are reports that the government is also soliciting the help of another technical diver, Alex Santos, who is said to be in Singapore.

The aircraft was attempting to make an emergency landing at the Masbate airport when it crashed in the water some 300 meters from the runway.

The government has organized Task Force Kalihim to ensure coordinated operations to find Robredo and pilots Jessup Bahinting and Kshitiz Chand.

Robredo’s police aide Senior Inspector Gil Abrazado Jr. survived the crash.

Government divers were from the Philippine Army’s Special Forces.

“We are praying that he and the two missing pilots were able to get out of the plane and they’re just out there waiting to be rescued. If not and if they went down with the doomed plane, survival is already zero,” a senior member of the search and rescue team said.

The US government is also helping search teams from the Philippine Navy and the Philippine Air Force.

A US aircraft earlier conducted a flyby over the seas around Masbate to search for the missing Cabinet official and his two companions.

Roxas said the US aircraft is equipped with “forward looking infrared” or FLIR camera to search for the ill-fated plane.

“Sonars work last night to be plotted for today’s search pattern,” Roxas said in his Twitter account.

“US plane with FLIR, forward looking infra red, also did flyby passes,” he added.

So far only the manifest and a portion of the wing of the Piper Seneca have been found, although Roxas said the sonar equipment has detected several “things” below but that their “shape and material could not yet be determined.” The unknown objects have been detected 200 feet below sea level.

Roxas said divers had to go deeper to search for the wreckage of the airplane.

“This is now what we call a technical dive…The target depth in this dive is about 200 feet up to 250 feet,” Roxas said in a TV interview, adding that recreational dives are around 100 to 120 feet underwater and can only stay around 10 minutes.

Roxas said a diver was previously able to recover the flight manifest at a depth of around 150 feet, and saw the sea floor had skid marks going deeper. “Something scraped the seafloor. They estimate another 200 to 250 feet,” he said in Filipino.

Roxas said a fleet survey team has also arrived to scan the seabed for the wreckage of the plane. “They came in (Monday), they are planning it out, they’ll do what they can in the remaining daylight hours.”

“An ROV (remote operated vehicle) team will arrive (today) in Subic courtesy of the US government,” said Roxas.

While conceding that “there has been no positive news” so far, Roxas stressed “this is still search and rescue.”

“The President has been here all night and he monitored the search to make sure all agencies of government are doing everything they can,” he told ABS-CBN television from Masbate. “We are hoping we might spot something on an isolated coast somewhere.”

Authorities, the abs-cbnnews report also said, have also reported a 20-foot wide oil slick just a couple of meters away from the skid mark of the ill-fated plane.

Coupled with information on tides and currents, plus the flight manifest gathered on Sunday, the divers are now focused at about 250 meters up to 300 meters at the Ticao Channel.

“In case there will be a sighting, they will mark the coordinates, then the Philippine Navy will come in (in case of rescue),” Roxas said.

He described the operations as very “professional.”

He also said more divers are expected to arrive to join the foreign divers.

Col. Ogie Gaite, Task Force Kalihim operations officer in Masbate, said the President has ordered local officials of the surrounding towns to involve barangay officials in the search.

He said experts believe the wreckage could have been carried by the strong sea current to Ticao Pass, which is two kilometers from the spot where the plane was believed to have crashed.

Gaite also said pure helium and oxygen tanks had already arrived for the divers’ use.

Meanwhile, the PCG said that about 63 of their divers are helping in the search and rescue efforts.

PCG spokesman Lieutenant Commander Armand Balilo said that apart from the order of their Bicol District headed by Commodore Joel Garcia to deploy all the divers from their Special Operations Group (SOG), PCG also has two vessels on standby carrying additional divers.

The PCG’s BRP Davao del Norte has been in Masbate since 4 p.m. of Aug. 19. The second vessel, the BRP EDSA 2 which has a decompression chamber on board, arrived in Masbate yesterday afternoon.

“Each SOG team has about seven divers. Once the BRP EDSA arrives in the area, there would already be nine teams in Masbate,” said Balilo.

The PCG earlier dispatched its helicopter to conduct aerial search.

They also issued a Notice to Mariners (NOTAM) to alert the vessels near the area to be on the lookout for the missing DILG official and two pilots. With Evelyn Macairan, Cecille Suerte Felipe, Cet Dematera