Cougar S-92 Down

Hey

Well this is a pretty serious post sadly. About 350km off the coast of Newfoundland at 9am on Thursday morning, a Cougar owned Sikorsky S-92 helicopter crashed into the Atlantic Ocean after a technical problem rumored to be an oil leak. Only one of the 18 on board the flight survived. The chopper had been doing a routine flight between rigs out on the White Rose field when it announced a mayday turned around and then 60km later crashed into the ocean.

The Transportation Safety Board were searching for the bodies for more than 40 hours, when their survival suits were expected to keep them alive 30 hours. They sent a couple of ROV's down to the helicopter yesterday and have confirmed that they have found the rest of the bodies still in the fuselage. They will be lifting the chopper up at later date after they found out that it hadn't sunk in one piece but had been badly damaged with the impact of hitting the water. The following list is the list released by the RCMP of the bodies confirmed to have have been on that flight and perished:

Tim Lanouette, 48, Comox, B.C., the first officer on the helicopter.
Peter Breen, 55, St. John's.
Gary Corbett, 46, Conception Bay South.
Wade Drake, 42, Fortune.
Wade Duggan, 32, Witless Bay.
Colin Henley, 38, St. John's.
Ken MacRae, 47, Greenwood, N.S.
Derrick Mullowney, 51, Bay Bulls.
Burch Nash, 44, Fortune.
Paul Pike, 49, Spaniard's Bay.
Allison Maher, 26, Mount Pearl, formerly of Aquaforte.
Thomas Anwyll, 46, Langley, B.C.

I decided to blog about this as my entire family is in the oil industry so it was the talk amongst us since it happened and still is.

My thoughts go out to all the families affected by the tragedy.

Rossie & Jossie

|