Two killed, one injured in chopper crash

AARON SPITZER

IQALUIT — A Clyde River man was severely burned in a helicopter crash that killed two other men in an isolated region of Baffin Island last week.

Adam Paneak, 49, was medevaced to Ottawa General Hospital, where, as of press-time Wednesday, he remained in critical condition in the intensive care ward.
Killed in the crash were pilot Charles Caron, 35, of Quebec City, and Mike Daniska, 22, of Victoria, B.C.

The accident occurred around 5 p.m. Aug. 9 near Flint Lake, about 100 kilometres north of Air Force Island on northwestern Baffin Island.

Paneak and Daniska were employees of the Vancouver-based mining company Cominco Ltd., which has an exploration camp near the lake. Caron was the chief pilot with Helimax, a helicopter company in Trois Riviéres, Que.

The helicopter, a Hughes 369D, apparently crashed as it was preparing to pick up a geologist who’d spent the day collecting rock samples about 20 minutes flying-time from the camp. The craft hit the ground about a half-kilometre from the geologist. It burst into flames and came to a rest on the side of a small hill three kilometres from the lake. Wreckage was scattered over an area about 200 metres in diameter.

“We’ve seen tremendous damage on the aircraft because of the speed of the rotor when it impacts,” said Charles Laurence, who is investigating the crash for the federal Transportation Safety Board. “There was also a violent fire that ensued – fuel-fed, of course. It caught fire and it burned quite extensively.”

According to Nunavut’s chief coroner, Elizabeth Copland, Daniska died from multiple burns suffered in the crash. Caron’s body was sent to Toronto for an autopsy. The cause of his death wasn’t expected to be known until after press-time Wednesday.

When the helicopter did not return to the Cominco camp that evening, workers there radioed employees of the Geological Survey of Canada, who were also camped near Flint Lake. A helicopter from the Geological Survey camp responded to the crash scene and transported the badly burned Paneak back to the Cominco camp.

A doctor and two paramedics from Iqaluit arrived at the camp aboard a Twin Otter aircraft around 4:30 a.m. Aug. 10. They transported Paneak to Iqaluit, where he was treated briefly at Baffin Regional Hospital before being sent on to Ottawa.

Daniska and Paneak had been working in the area for only a few weeks, prospecting for copper and zinc. Paneak is a casual employee of Cominco, while Daniska was a student working for the company on his summer break from the University of Victoria.

Ian Patterson, a spokesperson for Cominco, said weather in the area at the time of the accident was reportedly good, and winds were light. The terrain in the area consists of low rolling hills.

“At the moment we just can’t figure out what happened,” he said. “This was easy flying for a pilot. They’d just come from working up in the High Arctic, which was much more difficult.”

The cause of the crash is still under investigation, with a final report due out in about a year.