Peter Masak killed in 15 Meter Nationals crash

copied from http://www.ssa.org/contests/

15 Meter Nationals
Report for 23 May
(report by John Good)

This is a hard report to write. A huge number of people were involved
in an enormous search and rescue effort that began at 6:30pm yesterday, and
continued without interruption until well after noon today. But we were not
able to produce the result we so earnestly sought. Peter Masak crashed in a
heavily wooded area on the east side of Tussey Mountain, a few miles south
of the village of Alexandria at about 4:30 yesterday. Rescuers finally
reached him at around 10:00am today. The crash was not survivable - his
glider was destroyed and he was killed on impact.
A full description of the rescue effort would be a long and possibly
interesting tale of heroic effort, a certain amount of official obstruction
and bungling, frustration, innovation, perseverance, and finally tragedy. I
will undertake to write this story at some point because there are some
valuable lessons to be learned. But I feel I can't do it justice now. I got
just 2 hours of sleep last night - plenty of others got none at all. The
emotional drain of all this is perhaps better imagined than described.

Though I didn't know Peter well, I counted him as a friend, and my
heart is heavy today. I'll skip long encomiums and simply say that he was an
excellent example of the gentlemanly, thoughtful and uncommonly talented
person that our sport seems to attract.


I have time for just a couple of thoughts:

The effort that this sort of search requires is simply mind-boggling.
I couldn't hope to fully list the people here who gave unstintingly of their
time and effort, with no thought for personal expense, comfort or safety. I'
ll mention Brian and Cheri Milner as representative of many, many others.
Brian left around 8:00pm yesterday and worked until 3:00pm today, ferrying
search crews around in his car, coordinating communications, and doing many
other things. Cheri manned the phone back at Mifflin County Airport; she
would not consider grabbing a couple of hours sleep at the risk of leaving a
phone call unanswered.

Peter carried an ELT (emergency locator transmitter) and its signal
was invaluable. Instead of concentrating our search in the Big Valley near
the home field (where most pilots flew yesterday) we were able to find his
location (about 30 miles from home) less than an hour after he was missed,
accurate to a few miles. An Air Force satellite picked up the signals, and
this produced an impressive response from the Civil Air Patrol and local
emergency squads, little of which would have been possible if all we'd been
able to report was an overdue pilot. It's true that the ELT did not save
Peter's life. It's also true that it did save an incalculable amount of
time, effort, worry, heartache and risk to searchers. The crash was in a
rugged section of a protected watershed where hiking and hunting are
restricted. One local on the scene estimated that without the ELT it would
have been "years" until the crash was found.

By general consensus, today was not a contest day. It's unfortunate
that we lost it, as the weather looked reasonably good and those who've been
following this contest know that this has not often been the case. We now
need valid tasks on at lest three of the last four scheduled contest days -
I hope we can get them.


- John Good