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By Diana Bowley, Of the NEWS Staff - TOWNSHIP 8, RANGE 10 - One man died and two men were critically burned Sunday after the Cessna 206 seaplane in which they were passengers crashed and burned after takeoff from Horseshoe Pond. The deceased was identified as Vernon Inman, 77, of West Paris. The injured men were Harlan Abbott, 67, of West Paris and William Aridas, said to be in his 60s, also from West Paris. The pilot, Richard Dill, 32, of Greenville, who was working for Folsom's Air Service in Greenville, managed to walk away from the fiery crash. He suffered burns to his hands and arms while rescuing Abbott and Aridas from the burning plane. The two critically injured passengers were airlifted by wardens from the crash site to Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife headquarters in Greenville. One was flown to Eastern Maine Medical Center and the other to Maine Medical Center in Portland. Abbott was then taken by LifeFlight to Massachusetts General Hospital. Aridas was taken to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Massachusetts. The men's conditions were unavailable at presstime. Maine State Police received the report of the crash at 12:41 p.m. The seaplane crashed about one-quarter mile from Horseshoe Pond, where Dill had picked up the men, according to Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Department of Public Safety. The aircraft clipped some trees after takeoff, crash landed and caught fire on impact, he said. Dill told authorities that the plane's engine quit after takeoff. He had flown three others in the party earlier Sunday. They were Walter Inman, 45, of West Paris, the son of the deceased, Randall Jones, 39, of West Paris and his 9-year-old son Matthew. The men had flown in to the pond on Friday and had rented a camp owned by the Folsom family of Greenville. Representatives of the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were sending teams of investigators to the remote crash site that was being secured by Maine State Police. Sunday's crash was not the first in the area of Horseshoe Pond, according to Roger Currier of Currier's Flying Service of Greenville. "There have been more than a few planes that have had accidents coming in or out of Horseshoe Pond," he said. A handful of pilots, including Currier, refuse to fly in to the pond nestled at the base of Elephant and Indian mountains. Currier said that early in his aviation career, while he was an employee of another flying service, he had some incidents flying in and out of Horseshoe Pond that left him very uncomfortable. So uncomfortable that when he started his own service, he placed the pond on the list of remote places he won't fly to. "It doesn't give us the margin of safety we like to have," Currier said, because of the surrounding mountains and the "odd winds" that often prevail in that area. This is the second time Dill has walked away from a plane crash. Dill was flying three representatives of S.D. Warren on a routine field inspection in 1996 over Shirley when the engine of the single engine 185 Cessna plane he was piloting quit. Dill tried to reach Shirley Bog, but the wing of the plane struck a tree and the plane crash landed with its nose on the ground in the woods. None of the men involved in that crash was seriously injured. |