'Miracle' survival of pilot

2004-10-09 08:25

Erika Gibson

Pretoria - A 35-year-old pilot has survived a small aircraft crash in the Mpumalanga mountainside - stepping out of the wreckage virtually unscathed.

Cellphone technology helped rescuers find the pilot who had been helping fight forest and veld fires in the Lochiel area near Nelspruit up to the Oshoek border post with Swaziland.

According to Pine Pienaar, general manager of Nel Air, which undertakes fire-fighting in the area, the cold front moving in to the north from the Cape resulted in dry and very warm conditions in front of it.

These conditions, again, led to veld fires.

This particular fire was considered very serious - and classified red.

'The radio was dead'

"We have three aircraft fitted with water tanks and several helicopters shuttling all day long from fire to fire in an effort to bring them under control," Pienaar said.

"Normally the tankers come in to land at approximately six in the evening.

"On Thursday night only two came in to touch down while the third one, with Bevan Harris, 35, as pilot, radioed that he was entering the Nelspruit area but after that we heard nothing more from him. The radio was simply dead."

Nel Air and police helicopters immediately started a search for Harris' aircraft but thick smoke, bad visibility and approaching darkness prevented them from finding any sign of the missing plane.

"We were convinced that he had flown into the mountains at Kaapsche Hoop but we could not spot any wreckage from the air," Pienaar said.

"Then someone came to light with the bright idea that we ask the Pretoria police to trace Bevan's cellphone and establish its position.

"As it was an emergency the police assisted us immediately and the searching aircraft was enabled to find the wreck within ten minutes on the opposite side of the mountain to where they were looking.

"He had flown into an almost vertical ravine between the trees.

"Pieces of the aircraft's propeller were lying at the bottom of the ravine.

"Bevan was out of the aircraft, hanging onto a cliff and waved at the searching pilots.

"We were able to pull him out of the ravine by means of vehicles, hoists and ropes and took him to hospital in Nelspruit for a check-up.

"The fact that he survived the ordeal is certainly a miracle. The aircraft is a total write-off and we still do not know what went wrong - we will only be sure once we have had a full debriefing.

"Luckily we had overcast weather on Friday which helped to slow the fires, and this was complemented by the good news about Bevan."

- Beeld