O.C. Man Among Tanzania Plane Crash Victims

A Huntington Beach man was one of 10 Americans killed this week when their charter aircraft slammed into the slope of an ancient volcano in northern Tanzania, authorities said Thursday.

The U.S. State Department released the names of the 10 but said identifying the victims of Wednesday’s crash is likely to take several days because the plane apparently slammed at high speed into Mount Meru.

But as rescue workers clambered through a heavily forested ravine Thursday to recover their remains--as well as those of their Tanzanian guide and their Tanzanian pilot--air-traffic controllers uncovered one small miracle.

In the last seconds of his life, the pilot managed to warn a second plane carrying seven other American tourists to change altitude to escape bad flying conditions. That plane landed safely.

Retired optometrist Norman Dolan, 72, of Huntington Beach was traveling with a friend he met on a previous trip, relatives said.

Africa was “probably one of the few places he hadn’t been, and so he decided to go when he had the chance,” said Dolan’s stepson, Ray Ward.

Besides Dolan’s friend, 64-year-old MayAnne Rizzuti of Othello, Wash., the dead were a Massachusetts doctor and his father from Florida, a New Jersey couple, a man from New York, a man from Connecticut and two women from Florida.

The group was traveling from one world-famous game reserve to another. The Serengeti, which lies just south of the Masai Mara in Tanzania--and the adjacent Ngorongoro Crater--draws tourists from around the world to its vast plains, where lions, wildebeests, elephants, giraffes, cheetahs, gazelles and rhinos roam.

The base of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain and a favorite of climbers, is 38 miles northeast of the airport to which the tourists were headed.

Masai tribesmen living in the mountain’s densely forested foothills were the first to locate the crash site Wednesday afternoon, about 3,000 feet up its mist-shrouded western slope. But heavy clouds and drizzle hampered access to the spot where the plane went down.

“The weather was very bad, clouds were very low . . . and visibility was less than 900 feet,” said Julian Boullin, a paramedic from African Research Medical Foundation in Nairobi who participated in the search.

Police and medical rescue teams reached the site at first light Thursday, more than 19 hours after the crash. A base camp was set up at the foot of the mountain to receive bodies for transfer to the northern Tanzanian town of Arusha.

Air Kenya official Deogratias Ngowi visited the crash site and said the plane apparently hit a tree, then lost both wings before plowing into a ravine.

Northern Air pilot Christopher Perreira and guide Wilson Meiriali also died in the crash of the Northern Air Cessna 404, officials said.

Air-traffic controllers at the small airport in Arusha said they monitored a final message from Perreira warning the pilot of a second Northern Air plane to change altitude.

The trip was organized by Abercrombie and Kent, one of the largest tour companies running upscale safaris to East Africa from around the globe. The company has declined to comment, as has Northern Air.