VIEQUES, Puerto Rico -- A commercial twin-engine airplane crashed into the Caribbean Sea Thursday and killed all nine people aboard, just seconds after taking off for St. Croix, police said.
The owner of the airline, Vieques Air Link, blamed the accident on some 30 gallons of water believed to have filtered into an 8,000-gallon airport fuel tank during torrential rains Wednesday night.
The plane was refueled from the tank just before taking off from Vieques, a small island about 11 miles east of Puerto Rico. St. Croix is one of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The pilot, Miguel Garcia, 21, of Vieques, had worked for the small airline for about nine months. Police said he and all eight of his passengers were natives of Puerto Rico, although two lived in St. Croix.
'I am sure it was the adulterated fuel,' Oswaldo Gonzalez, owner of Vieques Air Link, said in an interview. 'It's the only way that two motors could have turned off at the same time.'
The problem with the fuel tank was discovered by airport employees after the pilot of another plane complained about water in his fuel.
Anibal Santiago, an airport official who was in radio contact with the plane, said there was no warning of a problem either in the pilot's radio communications or in his own visual observations of the plane.
'The pilot reported that he was going to take off and that was all the communication there was,' Santiago said.
'The plane took off and went down over there,' he added, pointing to the horizon. 'It was floating in the water for about five minutes and then sank.'
U.S. Navy and Coast Guard boats and helicopters, Puerto Rican police patrol boats and private yachts and fishing trawlers rushed to the scene, but only the tail of the plane remained above water when they arrived. All the bodies were recovered from the wreck.
Lee Brooks, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said the National Trasportation Safety Board would send an inspector from Atlanta to investigate the accident.
Olga Cruz, nursing supervisor at the Vieques city hospital, identified the victims as: pilot Garcia, Maria del Carmen Osorio Perez, 28, Juan Morales Vegerano, 67, Jose Morales, 11, and Benedicta Camacho Morales, 61, all of Vieques; Genaro Christian Matos, 75, and Aurelia Cordero de Christian, age unknown, of Ceiba, Puerto Rico; and Francisca Medina de Jesus, age unknown, and Maria Marisol Mercado, age unknown, of Machuchal, St. Croix.
Five people died onDec. 19, 1977, when another Vieques Air Link shuttle, flying the same route between Vieques and St. Croix, crashed at sea about six miles from Vieques.
