234 Killed In Indonesia Jetliner Crash Plane Goes Down Near Sumatra Airport; Two Americans From Oregon Among The Dead

An Indonesian jetliner crashed Friday in an area of Sumatra that has been shrouded in smoke from hundreds of forest fires, killing all 234 people aboard. Investigators were checking to determine if the thick haze over Southeast Asia was a factor.

Rescue teams picked through the smoking wreckage, and by nightfall the bodies of 212 people had been located in the lush, rugged terrain, airline official John Pieter said.

“All passengers and crew on board the plane that crashed were killed,” Communications Minister Haryanto Danutirto said today.

Two Americans were among the passengers on board the Garuda Airlines A-300B4 Airbus from Jakarta to Medan, the airline said. A television station in Portland, KGW, identified the two as Fritz Gustav Baden, 79, and his wife, Djoeminah Baden, 82, both of Lake Oswego, Ore.

The couple’s daughter, Joyce Cole, told the station that Indonesian authorities had notified her of their deaths.

In Indonesia, state TV played somber music as it listed the names of the victims, mostly Indonesians, Friday night. The names and nationalities of the dead could not be confirmed.

Workers at the crash site turned their attention turned to removing the remains of victims from the plane’s debris, which was strewn across a wide area.

The bodies, many cut and burned, were taken by trucks to a hospital morgue in nearby Medan for identification by relatives.

The search for the airplane’s flight recorders continued, they said. Authorities stressed that the cause of the crash of the 15-year-old twin-engine plane had not been determined.

Meanwhile, two cargo ships collided late Friday in the Strait of Malacca off the western coast of Malaysia, about 250 miles southeast of Medan. Officials said 28 crew members were missing.

Roslee Mat Yusof, an officer at the Maritime Rescue Coordinating Center in Port Klang, Malaysia, said investigators had yet to determine whether the thick haze was to blame.

It was the second collision in the Strait of Malacca since the hazardous levels of smoke blanketed the area. On Sept. 20, two cargo vessels collided, though no casualties or major damage was reported.

The dense haze has disrupted air traffic and forced airports to close because of dangerously low visibility. On Friday, rescue teams complained that the smoke prevented them from flying helicopters to the crash site, located 20 miles west of Medan’s Polonia Airport, 870 miles northwest of Jakarta.

This morning, all flights into Medan were delayed indefinitely because of the haze, airport official Zum Haris said. Garuda, Indonesia’s largest state-owned airline, had canceled several flights to Medan after the crash, citing poor visibility.

In Jakarta, dozens of anxious relatives waited at the airport, hoping to fly to Medan on the island of Sumatra, where some of the worst fires have been smoldering for months.

The official Antara news agency said the plane descended into the haze as it prepared to land. An unconfirmed report indicated the visibility was under 1,600 feet at the time.

Antara reported that radar contact was lost eight minutes after the pilot had radioed for guidance for his final approach. The plane crashed at 1:55 p.m. local time, an airline official said.

Officials quoted witnesses as saying the plane was flying low in the haze when it hit a tree and crashed into pieces. Some witnesses told Anteve television that they heard an explosion just before impact.

“The weather conditions were OK for landing, but there was smoke haze around Medan at the time,” Danutirto said.

Airport officials declined to say whether the aircraft had been on a visual or instrument approach, or what the visibility was at the time of the crash.

In addition to the two Americans, the airline said six Japanese, three Germans, one Dutch and at least one Malaysian were aboard. It said other foreigners might also have been on the flight. Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said six Taiwanese were killed.

Residents in Median told The Associated Press that the haze was the worst they had seen since the pollution crisis started two months ago.