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Five Environmental Consultants Killed in Plane Crash on Way to Investigate Ohio Metal Factory Explosion

Five Environmental Consultants Killed in Plane Crash on Way to Investigate Ohio Metal Factory Explosion

The consultants worked for The Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health (CTEH).

Awful.

Five environmental consultants died in a twin-engine plane crash after takeoff in Arkansas. They were on their way to investigate the metal factory explosion in Ohio.

  • Gunter Beaty, 23, a production safety data manager
  • Kyle Bennett, 36, a staffing manager, logistics
  • Micah Kendrick, 41, a safety supervisor
  • Sean Sweeney, 64, a pilot
  • Glenmarkus Walker, 32, a rapid responder

The plane was a twin propeller-engine Beech BE20.

The consultants worked for The Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health (CTEH). According to The Daily Mail, CTEH “specializes in environmental data collection and incident management – especially in terms of industrial hygiene and toxicology.”

An investigation has been ordered. The area had high winds and thunderstorms around the time of the crash. The wind had gusts up to 40mph.

National Transportation Safety Board spokesperson Jennifer Gabris said the preliminary report should arrive in two weeks.

Witnesses explained what they saw:

Witness Dennis Gordon told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that he was standing nearby when he heard a large explosion after strong winds blew into the area.

He said the initial explosion was followed by several other smaller explosions, leading to a fire and a large plume of smoke.

‘It was just red, then it starts turning black, and there’s this burnt smell,’ Gordon said.

The witness added that a large amount of smoke filled the sky following the crash, with fire crews quickly on the scene to extinguish the fire.

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Comments

What a sad sad day…

What a sad 3 years..

https://www.youtube.com/@blancolirio/videos

This is my go-to site for airplane crashes/events. He also has a pointer to the NTSB preliminary report on the derailment.

This will certainly not cause a bunch of conspiracy theories.

I’m sure there has to be a reason behind it, but I found it interesting that flight destination was Columbus, Ohio. The Cleveland airport or the Akron airport are much closer to the factory.

    Cleveland is a commercial airport, and twin-engine bug smashers do not fit in well there. (Also, landing fees are tremendous.) Columbus might be the only convenient small airport with hangar space available.

      buck61 in reply to GWB. | February 24, 2023 at 12:25 pm

      Columbus ( CMH) is about the same size as Cleveland (CLE) so the size of the plane is not a factor, there is also a smaller airport in downtown Cleveland called Burke Lakefront that could accommodate the plane as well. Like I said earlier you have Akron / Canton ( CAK) as an option. The CLE airport is about 20 miles away while CMH is over 100 miles away from Bedford.

“ARKANSAS – Police have confirmed reports of a small plane crash near the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock on Wednesday afternoon.”

I was just visited by the ghost of Ron Brown. He said if he saw me post the obvious snarky joke about this, he’d tell Jesus not to let me in.

We had a very strong pressure gradient pass through from West to East at around the same time. The wind went from calm to about 40+ instantly. The change was very noticeable. It lasted about ten minutes and ended as quickly as it began. We then had about five to ten minutes of heavy rain. While conspiracies are fun it’s pretty easy to understand how a small plane taking off at the exactly wrong time could have been impacted by the dramatic change in wind speed. This is an area where straightline winds will topple 70-80′ trees with ease.

    The Gentle Grizzly in reply to WestRock. | February 24, 2023 at 7:13 am

    It’s the same about that 777 that dropped after takeoff. Some sites are blaming it on affirmative action when a microburst is more likely the cause.

    Martin in reply to WestRock. | February 24, 2023 at 8:25 am

    I am not proposing that it is anything other that an accident. I was commenting on what would happen around it.

    That sort of thing, though, should be in forecasts and observations nearby.
    Generally, there’s something like get-home-itis involved that makes a crew think “Nah, we’ll make it” or “We have to get off before that hits.”

      buck61 in reply to GWB. | February 24, 2023 at 12:30 pm

      The NTSB will hopefully get to the bottom of what information the tower and the pilot had when he was prepping for the flight. Was he aware of possible wind shear type conditions in the area. If the conditions were known, why was permission to take off given by the tower?

kas and skas are pretty solid airplanes–been around since the mid-70’s or so–v2 about 120 and climb-out about 140 if remember correctly–from the news, doesn’t appear to have been overloaded (8 to 9 pass?) unless they were hauling a bunch of equipment along–stall about 85 or 90?–with gusting 40kt winds, sounds like a wind shear event

condolences to the victims and their loved ones

    Yeah, they took off into weather their aircraft couldn’t handle. 🙁

      WestRock in reply to GWB. | February 25, 2023 at 10:17 am

      I am hearing the gust was approx. 80 mph.

      If you weren’t here in Little Rock you can’t understand how quickly the wind came. I don’t think anyone anticipated wind going from 0 to 80 mph in literally seconds.

Witnesses explained what they saw:
Basically nothing of consequence. Calling someone who saw the smoke afterward a witness is a bit generous.