A helicopter takes off with business people on board in Tuscany, Italy. A little later he suddenly disappears from the radar. Only two days later, the rescue workers have a lead.
Seven people lost their lives in a helicopter crash in Italy’s Apennine mountains. This was announced by the prefecture in the northern Italian city of Modena on Saturday. After a search of around two days, rescue workers found the missing machine on the Monte Cusna mountain on the border of the Emilia-Romagna region with Tuscany, as the mountain rescue team confirmed on Saturday afternoon via Twitter. A hiker spotted parts of the helicopter and alerted authorities.
“We had coordinates and flew to the site. We found everything there burned,” an Air Force soldier said in a video tweeted by the military. “The area is difficult to reach with the winch,” he explained. Therefore, the emergency services had to walk to the scene of the accident. The find spot was roughly between two huts on Monte Cusna. The area is difficult to access and densely forested, as evidenced by Italian Air Force and Fire Brigade videos.
On Thursday, the helicopter, flown by an Italian, took off from an airport in Lucca, Tuscany. On board were four businessmen from a Turkish company and two men from a Lebanese company. An Italian company that produces kitchen paper towels, among other things, had chartered the helicopter to bring the business travelers close to Treviso in Veneto. The machine suddenly disappeared from the radar and there was no more news from the pilot or the passengers for hours.
Initially, the search focused on the area around the municipality of Pievepelago, which is about 70 kilometers south-west of Modena. But on Thursday: no result. The fire brigade, mountain rescuers, police and military continued to search for the helicopter on Friday. In the evening, however, they reported “negative result of the search”.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry announced on Friday that its embassy in Rome and the consulate general in Milan were in contact with the Italian authorities. The two companies from Turkey and Lebanon also stated that they were looking for their employees. According to the Prefecture of Modena, the diplomatic missions of both countries were informed about the find on Saturday.
It was initially unclear how the accident happened. The cause is still under investigation. The Italian Agency for Aviation Safety initiated investigations, as reported by the Ansa news agency.
