Residents around plane crash site heard 'large boom'

Signs have been found of a Kenya-bound flight that crashed in Cameroon with 114 people aboard, an aviation official said today.

Residents in the area where the Kenya Airlines plane is thought to have crashed reported hearing a “large boom” on Saturday and some said they saw a flash of fire markedly different from lightning.

Thomas Sobakam, chief of meteorology for the Douala airport from where the flight took off early on Saturday, refused to describe the signs, but said they were not pieces of wreckage. He said a state radio report saying the crash site had been located was premature. He refused further comment, stressing that the search for the plane’s body continued.

Michael Okwiri, spokesman for Kenya Airways, said officials in Kenya also received reports that the plane had been found but could not confirm them. Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua said he contacted Cameroonian authorities but they “refused to verify the reports. They have asked us to give them some time”.

The international search for the Kenya Airways plane has been hampered by heavy rain followed by fog, thick forest and the rugged, remote terrain where it was believed to have crashed.

A Kenya Airways official added at a news conference in Nairobi early today that the plane stopped emitting signals after an initial distress call, though an automatic device should have kept up emissions for another two days.

“Why the signal is not being heard right now, we’re not quite sure,” said Kenya Airways CEO Titus Naikuni.

An exhausted battery could be one reason, said Captain Paul Mwangi, head of operations for Kenya Airways.

“It is very unlikely but the device can actually be destroyed. The impact would have to be very, very severe,” Mwangi said.

Sobakam had said at least 20 search-and-rescue vehicles that spent Saturday night in the bush were positioned at strategic points inside the vast forest and were searching methodically. The effort includes a team of Cameroonian firefighters, as well as several teams led by MTN, a South African cell phone company that had several employees on board the crashed jet, Sobakam said.

After pausing overnight because of rain, helicopters resumed a search by air today, Sobakam said.

Kenyan officials were on the scene, France lent helicopters and the US and Boeing sent experts.

The search has focused on an area south of coastal town of Douala. Late Sunday, the Kenya Airways CEO raised the possibility that the plane may instead have gone down in a swamp. He based that on reports from fishermen of a loud bang accompanied by a water disturbance on Saturday.

“This raises the possibility the plane went down in this swampy area,” Naikuni said. He said he did not have a name for the area but said it is north of Douala.

The jet bound for the Kenyan capital went down near Lolodorf, about 90 miles south-east of Douala, where it had taken off after midnight on Friday, said Alex Bayeck, a regional communications officer.

The Boeing 737-800 was carrying 114 people, including 105 passengers from 27 countries, Kenyan airline officials said, releasing a list of passengers’ names today.

A Nairobi-based Associated Press correspondent, Anthony Mitchell, was on the list. Mitchell had been on assignment in the region for the past week.

“We hope for the best,” AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll said Saturday.

In Kenya, the mother of a crew member sobbed outside a building where the press has gathered for updates.

“Oh my last born, my last born, where am I going to go?” Kezzia Musimbi Kadurenge said as a son helped her walk. “I’m finished.”

The remote area has few roads and is dotted by small villages. Infrastructure is poor in Cameroon’s interior, with much of the area being searched only accessible by dirt tracks that turn to impassable mud in the rainy season. The country of 17 million on Africa’s western coast has oil reserves and lush farmland but many of its citizens remain poor subsistence farmers.

Boeing spokesman Jim Proulx said the plane that crashed was equipped with an emergency transmitter that sends out an automatic locator signal “in the event of a rapid change in velocity”.