Still no trace of air ambulance

By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Big Island Bureau

HILO, Hawai'i — Searchers flew over triple-canopy jungle in Hamakua and drove along miles of coastline in an effort to locate a missing air ambulance with three people on board yesterday, but found no trace of the plane.

Dominica Villiaros, mother of flight paramedic Joseph Daniel Villiaros, called news of the missing airplane and crew "a rude awakening." Rebecca Breyer • The Honolulu Advertiser

The crew included flight paramedics Joseph Daniel Villiaros, 39, and Emergency Medical Service district chief Mandy Shiraki. The pilot has not been identified.

Kilani Villiaros, 14, praised her father in a statement she read on behalf of a dozen family members who gathered at the Hawai'i Air Ambulance headquarters yesterday.

Villiaros, who does not live with her father, said her dad taught her to surf and spent time with her shopping at the mall. She said he was trying to buy a home down the street from where she lives.

"Even though I didn't see him as much as I wanted to, he was a great dad," Kilani Villiaros said.

She said she last saw her father Thursday when they ate at McDonald's together. Villiaros' mother, Dominica, a minister, said her son liked to help people. She said as the youngest of five children, her son was a good worker and very obedient.

She said her son was sent to EMT school after joining the National Guard. She said he earned a commendation from the mayor for assisting in an "ice" arrest.

"We're so proud of him," Dominica Villiaros said. "This is a rude awakening, we did not expect this to happen."

Villiaros has been with Hawai'i Air Ambulance for a year.

As for the Shiraki family, Mandy Shiraki's wife, fellow paramedic Melinda Shiraki, and other Shiraki family members remain hopeful, Kelly Yamamoto, a family friend and co-worker, said last night.

"They are very grateful for the outpouring of love and offers of assistance," she said. "They ask everyone to continue to pray for Mandy and the other crew members."

Yamamoto, also with EMS, said she has known Mandy Shiraki for 20 years.

"All of his life saving and helping people and training people — he's probably the most dedicated EMS worker in all history," she said. "He's a great co-worker: always looking out for his field personnel, always helpful, always giving 150 percent of himself in everything.

"He is the best," she said. "And they have to find him. They just have to."

Retired Fire Capt. Richard Soo said Shiraki's is a familiar face to most emergency workers in the community, who know the district chief for his tendency to be the first at the scene of an emergency.

"Sometimes he even beats the Fire Department," Soo said.

Soo said it was difficult to watch the news and see Shiraki and Villiaros as people in need of rescue, instead of rescuing others.

"Then again," he said, "they are out there serving their communities — and putting themselves at risk."

The missing air ambulance left Honolulu early Saturday to pick up a 9-year-old patient from the Hilo Medical Center, and was due back in Honolulu shortly after 4 a.m. Saturday.

Authorities said the plane veered off the normal path for air ambulances on the leg of the journey between 'Upolu Point and Hilo. Those flights usually follow the coast at about 9,500 feet, but the missing flight headed further inland and was noted traveling at about 5,900 feet.

Searchers suspect the pilot deviated from his planned route into Hilo and sought out higher elevations toward Mauna Kea after running into bad weather.

"Weather along the coastline was terrible — socked in, with heavy rains and winds along the shores," said Coast Guard Lt. j.g. James Garland.

The pilot radioed to ask about any thunderstorm activity in the Hilo area, and the last confirmed radar contact at 1:29 a.m. Saturday put the Cessna near the Waimea-Kohala Airport outside Waimea, or about 20 miles southeast of 'Upolu Point on the Big Island.

The aircraft issued no distress call, and its emergency locator transmitter has not issued a signal.

Garland said searchers "saturated" the point where the air ambulance's position was last recorded, beginning the effort yesterday around the small Waimea-Kohala airport.

By midday, the 15-mile stretch from Waimea to Honoka'a had been checked, and search teams turned their attention to aerial sweeps over the slopes of Mauna Kea and the shores of the Hamakua coast, with checks made as far south as Hilo, said Big Island Assistant Fire Chief Lloyd Narimatsu.

Garland said the ground and ocean search area is 3,500 square miles, with cloud cover low over the shoreline. Only the higher elevations of Mauna Kea offered good search conditions, he said.

"There are no signs," Garland said. "We haven't seen anything."

The 40 miles from Honoka'a to Hilo present significant challenges for the search crews.

The lush coastline is a series of dozens of deep, overgrown gulches carved into hundreds of square miles of land extending downslope from Mauna Kea. The area includes sections of the North Hilo district with average rainfalls of 240 inches a year.

"We're hoping it stays clear," Narimatsu said.

Aircraft involved in the search included helicopters from the Big Island Fire Department, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Hawai'i National Guard and the Drug Enforcement Administration, Narimatsu said.

Airplanes from Windward Aviation on Maui and the Civil Air Patrol in Hilo also joined in the search, he said.

The plane was equipped with an emergency locator transmitter, designed to transmit a signal when an aircraft crashes, but the Cessna's ELT isn't transmitting, Garland said.

"This is the third time in the past couple of years this has happened," Garland said.

ELTs failed to kick into operation when Cessna Cardinal 177 crashed on Maui in July 2002, killing four members of a family, and when a 17-year-old pilot crashed in a Cessna 172 on Moloka'i in January 2003.

Mike Fergus, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration's northwest mountain region, said the emergency location transmitter does fail "on occasion."

In some cases ELT transmissions have been affected when the equipment is buried in dirt during a crash, or submerged in water, he said. If wreckage from the flight is recovered, the crash investigation will include an inquiry into why the transmitter failed, he said.

Narimatsu said all three crew members had mobile phones, and cell-phone service providers attempted to narrow the search area yesterday by tracing the locations of the phones.

But by the end of the day yesterday rescuers learned one of the three phones is off, and information was not yet available on the other two, he said.

The focus of the search this morning was to be from the Laupahoehoe area south to Hilo, Narimatsu said.

Advertiser reporters Karen Blakeman and Peter Boylan contributed to this report. Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 935-3916.