Army holds out hope for crash soldiers

• Newspaper section: News

The army holds out a slim hope that some of the nine people on board a military Black Hawk helicopter that crashed on Tuesday are still alive.

Soldiers carry the remains of the five victims of Saturday’s helicopter crash to a special storage facility at Kaeng Krachan special warfare training camp in Phetchaburi where they will be formally identified. PATTANAPONG HIRUNARD

Army spokesman Col Sansern Kaewkamnerd said there was a chance some of them had not perished because the helicopter's emergency location transmitter had not sent out signals as it was supposed to do after a crash.
He said that could mean the chopper had not come down hard, leaving some hope of survivors.
The army has sent two patrol teams to search for the Black Hawk and possible survivors and Burmese troops are assisting them, he said.
The helicopter crashed during an operation to retrieve the bodies of five soldiers who died in another helicopter crash near the border on Saturday. Their bodies were retrieved from Tanaosi mountain at 3pm yesterday.
The two search teams will begin from two different spots and move toward the area where the army suspects the helicopter crashed.
A military-operated global positioning system has shown that the helicopter lost contact when it was flying over the Burmese town of Myeik (Mergui).
The town is located in the extreme south of the country on the coast of an island in the Andaman Sea.

It is located about 1km from the border, near a Burmese military battalion and about 2km from the Ton Nam Petch forestry base in Thailand.
The first team will travel to an area south of Saturday's helicopter crash site. The army believes this is where the helicopter went down. Soldiers who were waiting for the Black Hawk on a nearby mountain reported hearing an explosion in that direction.
The second patrol team will start combing the forest on Khao Phanoen Thung mountain in Kaeng Krachan National Park in Phetchaburi province and move toward a spot 15km away, where the two teams are supposed to meet.
The search is expected to be completed in the next three to four days.
Ekkaphop Chanphen, head of the Phetchaburi Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Office, said his office had been asked to send a rescue team to the suspected crash site to support the army's operations.
The bodies of the five soldiers who were killed in Saturday's crash were found on the side of Tanaosi mountain 1,100m above sea level.
The search teams brought the bodies down to 900m above sea level where weather conditions were better.
After that the corpses were airlifted one at a time by helicopter to the Kaeng Krachan special warfare training camp in Phetchaburi for identification.
The bodies will later be transported to the 9th Infantry Division encampment in Kanchanaburi.
The five dead are first pilot Maj Kitisak Chin-iam, second pilot Lt Pratya Nualsri, Maj Kitiphum Ekkaphan, a military officer attached to the Thap Phraya Suea Camp, and two mechanics: SM 1 Rangsan Polsaibua and SM1 Narongdet Pongnumkul.