Winds foil lake hunt for 3 men

PROVO — Divers and rescue teams continued searching Saturday for three men who are missing after their plane crashed into Utah Lake shortly before midnight Thursday.

High winds at 7:30 p.m. interrupted the second day of the search in the lake's murky waters. The search had been scheduled to continue at least until 9 p.m., said Utah County Sheriff's Lt. Darren Gilbert, but the winds interfered with sonar equipment used by divers.

"It really hurts the sonar's ability to read what's under the surface of the water," he said. "It takes a toll on the searchers."

By 10 p.m., Utah's Department of Public Safety's dive team had pulled its boat out of the water. The team had just returned from a two-day search in Flaming Gorge. At the gorge, divers recovered the body of a drowning victim, Utah Highway Patrol Lt. Doug McCleve said.

Gilbert said weather forecasts indicated the gusts that caused one to two-foot swells on the lake would last until 9 p.m. Several sonar operators were prepared to return to the lake and work during the night if the winds died down, Gilbert said.

"We'll continue to search until we deem appropriate," Gilbert said. "We'll plan on being back in the morning, weather permitting."

The forecast for the next three days calls for possible high winds, he said.

Dive teams from Utah, Summit and Wasatch counties, as well as the DPS dive team, scoured a 3-mile underwater radius with more than one kind of sonar, Gilbert said. Crews are focusing their efforts on looking for the hull, engine and wing.

"We're concentrating on searching beneath the surface of the lake," Gilbert said. "We're trying to concentrate on key components of the plane that are under the water."

The lake is shallow and the water in the search area averages only 9 to 12 feet deep, but the silty bottom makes it difficult to see, even for divers wearing masks, Gilbert said.

In addition, rescue crews searched a 5-mile perimeter of the shore of the lake, looking for more of the plane's wreckage. According to Gilbert, the emergency locator transmitter, which is supposed to be affixed to the plane's "black box," did not go off in this case. The plane was a single-engine turboprop.

Searchers have so far recovered the tail and one wing of the plane.