VALPARAISO | Thirteen members of the Valparaiso branch of the Indiana Civil Air Patrol were critical to finding the body of the pilot of a fallen aircraft over the weekend in Illinois.
Lt. Col. John Bryan said he and his crew received a call from the Federal Aviation Administration on Friday after it had launched a federal response to a missing aircraft report near Benton, Ill. The plane, reported missing by friends of solo pilot Daniel Bradac Sr., could not be found Thursday night or Friday during the day by initial police searches.
"We left at midnight on Friday and arrived at 5:30 a.m. Saturday after driving all night, taking shifts at the wheel," said Bryan, who said his team is comprised of ex-military, cadets and volunteers.
Valparaiso was one of the six towns sent from Indiana. Valparaiso sent two ground teams with two vehicles, an operations section chief, a planning section chief, and Bryan who is a member of the critical incident stress management team.
Ground team members were Capt. John Seramur, Lt. Col. Ethan Price , Maj. Tristan DeFord, 1st Lts. Anthony Gallas, Paul Lowry and Wayne Lowry and Sgts. Sam Price, Eric Wilmsen and Neil Weston.
Bryan says that after an all-day search with air and ground crews on Saturday, they were forced to send the three aircraft from Indiana and Illinois teams home due to the pending inclement weather Saturday night.
Although the flight searches did yield some sightings, they turned out to be scrap aluminum siding lying in a field.
"So Saturday night we all met, looked over our data, and came up with theories on where to conduct an extensive search in the woods and uneven terrain around the Benton airport up to Rend Lake," Bryan said.
Bryan says the mastermind of those talks was 1st Lt. Chris Curdes, a resident of Valparaiso and a firefighter and paramedic in Hobart. He was the Valparaiso squadron commander.
Those talks were fruitful, Bryan said. Sunday morning's search turned up the wreckage in only 20 minutes. The team that found the downed plane and Bradac's body included Seramur, a federal park ranger and two others.
Bryan said his job commenced once the plane, a Rand KR-2 home-built, was found.
"Once the team found the wreckage and came back, we debriefed them according to a national model that has seven processes to help deal with the stress, since there was a fatality found. This prevents burnout and emotional distress," Bryan said.
The National Transportation Safety Board will now conduct its investigation for the next year or longer. Part of that process is the autopsy to determine the crash's cause.
