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    At Least One Dead After Private Plane Crashes in Upstate New York

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    The plane, a Mitsubishi MU-2B carrying two passengers, went down Saturday in the town of Copake close to the Massachusetts border, according to the authorities.A plane crashed in a field on Saturday near the town of Copake, N.Y., leaving at least one dead, according to the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office.The plane, a Mitsubishi MU-2B bound for Columbia County Airport near Hudson, N.Y., was carrying two passengers and crashed a little after noon, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.The aircraft went down near Two Town Road and did not damage any structures, Undersheriff Jacqueline Salvatore told reporters at a news conference on Saturday afternoon. Ms. Salvatore did not say how many people had been killed or if there were any survivors. The two passengers have not been identified.A private plane of the same model departed Westchester County Airport in White Plains, N.Y., shortly after 11:30 a.m., flying north toward Hudson before turning east at about noon, according to the tracking site Flightradar24. Minutes later, the craft disappeared from the site near Copake, a small town bordering Taconic State Park near the Massachusetts border.That plane was registered to a company based outside Boston, according to F.A.A. records.Ms. Salvatore said that, in addition to officers from the sheriff’s department, personnel from the New York State Police and a local fire department responded to the scene. Law enforcement officials received a 911 call about the crash at around noon, she said.At that time, the weather in the area was mostly mild, with overcast skies and wind gusts up to 26 miles per hour, according to the National Weather Service.Snow and moisture on the ground were hampering response efforts, Ms. Salvatore said.“It’s in the middle of a field and it’s pretty muddy, so accessibility is difficult,” she said.It was not immediately clear Saturday afternoon what had caused the plane to crash, Ms. Salvatore said, but local law enforcement planed to conduct interviews in the neighborhood to learn more.The F.A.A. and the National Transportation Safety Board are also investigating the crash, according to the aviation agency’s statement.In November of last year, a small plane carrying a pilot and four rescue dogs crashed roughly 50 miles west of Copake, in a remote area of the Catskill Mountains. In June, five members of a family were killed about 40 miles northeast of Binghamton, N.Y., when their small plane crashed en route from Cooperstown to Georgia. More

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      What Is the Bell 206L Helicopter?

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      The sightseeing helicopter that crashed into the Hudson River on Thursday, killing six people, was a Bell 206L LongRanger, a common single-engine aircraft long used for law enforcement missions, medical lifts, newsgathering and aerial tourism.The 206L has been in use for decades; its maker, Bell Textron, an aviation company based in Texas, took it out of production less than 10 years ago. With upkeep, the model is seen as safe and reliable, according to Greg Feith, a former National Transportation Safety Board investigator who has flown one. “It’s a tried and true aircraft,” Mr. Feith said, adding, “As long as the maintenance has been done, and done properly, it’s going to be a reliable aircraft.” The helicopter is versatile and light, can carry up to six occupants, and flies at maximum speeds of about 115 miles per hour, Mr. Feith said.Over the last 25 years, Bell 206 helicopters — a family of similar models that includes the Bell 206L — have been involved in 82 fatal accidents in the United States, according to National Transportation Safety Board records. A spokeswoman for Bell, Lindsey Hughes, said in a statement, “Bell is following this tragedy as it develops, but we must direct any questions to the NTSB.” The 206L has been particularly popular with helicopter sightseeing tour companies, according to Shawn Pruchnicki, a former airline pilot and an assistant professor at the Center for Aviation Studies at Ohio State University.Mr. Pruchnicki said that he had greater concerns about the safety record of aerial sightseeing companies than the model of helicopter. “The helicopter tours do have a problematic record,” he said, “and they have had for a long time.” Mr. Feith, the former N.T.S.B investigator, said he would want to know the number of flights the aircraft had flown on Thursday and whether it had recent maintenance work done. “You want to see if there was evidence of fatigue, overstress” on the helicopter, Mr. Feith said. “There are a lot of elements to be explored.”Santul Nerkar More

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      Teen Who Set Off Avalanche Is Fourth Person Killed on Alaska Slopes This Month

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      A 16-year-old was riding a snowmobile in the Kenai Mountains when he was swept away and buried, officials said.An Alaska teenager who was riding a snowmobile was killed on Saturday when he set off an avalanche and was buried, becoming the fourth person in the state to lose their life in a mountain slide this month, the authorities said.The number is high for Alaska, which forecasters say in recent years has been averaging three avalanche deaths annually.The 16-year-old, whose body was recovered on Sunday, was identified by the Alaska State Troopers as Tucker Challan of Soldotna, Alaska. He was buried under about 10 feet of snow while riding in Turnagain Pass in the Kenai Mountains, about 60 miles south of Anchorage.The avalanche occurred on the backside of Seattle Ridge, in a popular recreation area known as Warmup Bowl, the Chugach National Forest Avalanche Information Center said.At the time, the center reported, there was a weak layer of frost about two to three feet beneath the snow surface, which experts say can easily collapse and cause an avalanche. The layers form when the weather is clear and present a hidden danger with each new winter storm.“It’s like a layer cake,” Wendy Wagner, the center’s director, said in a phone interview on Monday. “It has been causing many avalanches.”According to the center, a group of people who were riding snow machines — often referred to as snowmobiles outside Alaska — dug Tucker out of the snow in about an hour, but he had died from his injuries.On the afternoon of his death, the center held an avalanche awareness program in a parking lot on the other side of the ridge, which it said was a coincidence. It is continuing to warn that people should avoid traveling on or below steep terrain.Noting that avalanches can reach speeds over 60 miles per hour, Ms. Wagner said that snowmobile riders and skiers should not assume that the snowpack is stable because other people have crossed it.“There can be a sense that if you trigger something that you can outrun it,” she said. “Just because there have been tracks on a slope doesn’t mean that slope is safe.”On March 4, three people who were part of a helicopter skiing excursion were killed when they were swept away in an avalanche near Girdwood, Alaska, about 20 miles from where Saturday’s slide happened.The authorities identified the three men as David Linder, 39, of Florida; Charles Eppard, 39, of Montana; and Jeremy Leif, 38, of Minnesota.Despite deploying their avalanche airbags, according to the helicopter skiing company that the skiers had hired, they were buried beneath 40 to 100 feet of snow and could not be reached.Ms. Wagner said this year had been particularly treacherous in Alaska.“It’s been an unusual year,” she said, “tragically.” More

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      Edison’s Power Lines Were Under Strain 14 Hours Before Eaton Fire

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      New data suggests there were faults on Southern California Edison’s transmission lines early on Jan. 7 before the fire started that evening.About 14 hours before the Eaton fire started on Jan. 7 on the hills above Altadena and Pasadena, Calif., power lines in the area had signs of being under strain from intensifying winds.New data from a company that maintains electrical sensors suggests that the transmission network of Southern California Edison was stressed long before the most severe winds bore down on the Los Angeles region, adding to growing criticism that the electric utility did not do enough to prevent the blaze. Edison is already under review as the possible cause of the Eaton fire, which fire killed 17 people and destroyed more than 9,400 buildings.The data comes from Whisker Labs, a technology company in Maryland, and suggests there were faults, or electrical malfunctions, on Edison’s transmission lines at 4:28 a.m. and 4:36 a.m. on the day of the fire. Winds speeds at the time were sustained at 60 miles per hour, with gusts as high as 79 m.p.h., — strong enough for engineers to consider cutting power.Later in the day, Whisker identified two faults just minutes before the fire started, at about 6:11 p.m., on the transmission network near Eaton Canyon, where fire investigators have said the Eaton Fire began. Those faults matched flashes on the transmission lines recorded by a video camera at a nearby Arco gas station. More

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      Plane Fire at Denver Airport Forces Passengers to Evacuate Onto Wing

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      The flight had been diverted to the airport after experiencing “engine vibrations,” the authorities said. Six passengers were taken to a hospital for evaluation.American Airlines, which operated the flight, said the plane had experienced an “engine-related issue.”Branden Williams/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAn American Airlines plane that was diverted to Denver International Airport on Thursday evening after experiencing “engine vibrations” caught fire while taxiing to a gate, prompting the evacuation of dozens of passengers, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.Six passengers were taken to a hospital for further evaluation, the airline said. Their conditions were not immediately known.The flight, a Boeing 737-800 with 172 passengers and six crew members, was traveling from Colorado Springs to Dallas but was diverted to the Denver airport, the airline said. Some of the passengers were evacuated from the aircraft using slides, the F.A.A. said.“After landing safely and taxiing to the gate at Denver International Airport, American Airlines Flight 1006 experienced an engine-related issue,” the airline said. Videos posted to social media showed passengers standing on the plane’s wing and climbing down a portable staircase to leave the plane. Light gray smoke filled the air. From other angles, black smoke poured out of the aircraft and orange flames could be seen at the base of the aircraft.A video taken by Mike Insalata, a Denver resident, showed a large fire under the plane’s left engine. The F.AA. is investigating.The episode at Denver International Airport was the latest in a recent string of aviation woes. On Feb. 25, two separate airplanes, one at Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport and another at Chicago’s Midway International Airport, had to abort landings to avoid collisions.Earlier last month, a plane at the Toronto Pearson Airport flipped over. And on Feb. 5, the wing of a plane was impaled on the tail of another plane during a collision on the ground at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. More

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      James Reason, Who Used Swiss Cheese to Explain Human Error, Dies at 86

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      Mistakes happen, he theorized, because multiple vulnerabilities in a system align — like the holes in cheese — to create a recipe for disaster.The story of how James Reason became an authority on the psychology of human error begins with a teapot.It was the early 1970s. He was a professor at the University of Leicester, in England, studying motion sickness, a process that involved spinning his subjects round and round, and occasionally revealing what they had eaten for breakfast.One afternoon, as he was boiling water in his kitchen to make tea, his cat, a brown Burmese named Rusky, sauntered in meowing for food. “I opened a tin of cat food,” he later recalled, “dug in a spoon and dolloped a large spoonful of cat food into the teapot.”After swearing at Rusky, Professor Reason berated himself: How could he have done something so stupid?The question seemed more intellectually engaging than making people dizzy, so he ditched motion sickness to study why humans make mistakes, particularly in high-risk settings.By analyzing hundreds of accidents in aviation, railway travel, medicine and nuclear power, Professor Reason concluded that human errors were usually the byproduct of circumstances — in his case, the cat food was stored near the tea leaves, and the cat had walked in just as he was boiling water — rather than being caused by careless or malicious behavior.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      An Oregon Family Vanished in 1958. Their Car May Have Been Found in a River.

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      The case of the Martin family’s disappearance has bewildered local residents and investigators for more than six decades — until Friday.On Dec. 7, 1958, Ken and Barbara Martin of Portland, Ore., took their three daughters on a family trip through the mountains en route to collect Christmas greenery. They stopped at a gas station near Cascade Locks, Ore., on the banks of the Columbia River, but were never heard from again.The case of the Martin family’s disappearance has bewildered local residents and investigators for more than 66 years — until Friday.Acting on a tip from a diver, the authorities spent two days dredging up parts of a car in Cascade Locks that they believe is the Martins’ 1954 red and off-white Ford station wagon — potentially bringing at least part of the mystery of their disappearance to a close.Shortly after the family’s disappearance, the authorities speculated that their car might have gone over a cliff near the city of Cascade Locks, plunging into the Columbia River in an isolated area, The Associated Press reported at the time.But there were no immediate answers, even in 1959, after the authorities recovered the bodies of two of the three Martin daughters in the river: Virginia, 13, and Sue, 11, who were found 25 miles apart. Barbara, 14, and her mother and father, ages 48 and 54, were nowhere to be found.Ken and Barbara Martin, center, with their children in 1952. Their children are, from left, Barbara, Sue, Donald and Virginia. Donald was not on the trip when the rest of the family disappeared.Uncredited/Ken Martin family, via Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Avalanche Buries Road Workers’ Camp in India, Killing 8

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      Rescuers working in extreme conditions evacuated 46 other construction workers trapped beneath feet of snow.Eight road construction workers died after becoming trapped under an avalanche in northern India, the Indian Army said on Sunday. Rescuers operating in several feet of snow evacuated 46 other workers.The workers were buried by the snow early on Friday in the village of Mana, in the state of Uttarakhand, as the avalanche hit their camp site.Disaster response teams coordinated the rescue efforts under extreme weather conditions, and the work was halted several times because of incessant snowfall and rain. GPS, sniffer dogs and thermal imaging cameras were used to find the workers.India’s Meteorological Department warned of the possibility of further avalanches in the area, which is known as a gateway for Himalayan mountain trekking.The rescued workers, many in critical condition, were taken by helicopters to hospitals in neighboring Joshimath. The workers belong to the Border Roads Organization, a division of the Indian armed forces that develops and maintains road networks in India’s border areas.Mana sits at an altitude of 3,200 meters, or more than 10,000 feet, and is about 15 miles from the Tibetan border. During the winter months, the village’s entire population migrates to lower elevations to escape the snowfall.Uttarakhand is prone to avalanches and floods. One of the country’s worst natural disasters took place there in 2013, when flooding killed more than 1,000 people. In 2021, 11 people died when an avalanche hit a Border Roads Organization camp in the district that includes Mana.As the Uttarakhand rescue efforts were completed, an operation to reach eight workers trapped in a tunnel in southern India were still underway, more than a week after the tunnel’s ceiling collapsed. Officials have said that the workers’ chances of survival are very remote. More

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      3 Workers Killed in Collapse at Construction Site in South Korea

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      Five others were injured when part of a highway construction site collapsed on Tuesday morning, officials said.Three workers were killed and five others were injured when part of a highway construction site collapsed in South Korea on Tuesday morning, officials said.Emergency crews were searching through the rubble for victims, South Korea’s Fire Department said. The collapse happened at about 9:50 a.m. near the city of Cheonan, in South Chungcheong Province, which is about 50 miles south of Seoul, the capital. A video published by Yonhap, a South Korean news agency, showed part of a structure supported by columns breaking into pieces and plunging to the ground.This is a developing story that will be updated. More