c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Remnants of Hurricane Mitch, the deadly storm that swept through Central America over the weekend, are being pointed to as a possible cause for a plane crash in western Guatemala that killed 11 people, including 10 American missionaries and a Guatemalan pilot.

Seven other Americans injured in the crash were hospitalized.

The exact cause of Sunday’s crash remains a mystery, but the torrential rain created in the aftermath of Mitch _ at the time of the crash classified as a tropical depression _ was suggested in some reports from Guatemala as a possible cause of the crash.

The Sunday crash occurred as the cargo plane, operated by Living Water Teaching International, shuttled the last group of short-term missionaries from a development project in Playa Grande, Guatemala, to the organization’s international headquarters in the country’s second largest city, Quetzaltenango, Jay Dunlap, a missionary pilot serving as spokesman for the ministry said Tuesday (Nov. 3).

The Rev. James Zirkle, 57, founder of the nondenominational, evangelical mission organization, and his son, James II, one of the aircraft’s pilots, both died in the accident.

The seven Americans were taken to a hospital in Quetzaltenango with minor injuries. According to Dunlap, five were released Monday and the remaining two were expected to be released Tuesday.

The 18 passengers were mostly volunteers from nondenominational churches throughout the United States who had each raised about $1,200 to participate in the 10-day mission trip to the impoverished Guatemalan village of Playa Grande, 80 miles north of Mexico City.

There, the volunteers, who ranged from doctors to high school students, treated the physical and spiritual needs of the villagers, Dunlap said.

In the few days before the crash, Dunlap said the volunteers treated 7,000 people in its makeshift clinic, bandaging wounds, treating infections and providing patients with a month’s supply of vitamins and the ministry’s prayers.

Zirkle and his wife founded Living Water nearly 20 years ago when on a trip to Central America they were struck by the great need in the area. “He believed that God had given him answers to reach out to these people’s needs,”said Dunlap, who described Zirkle as a leader well-loved for being straightforward, showing his warts and all. “One of the (group’s) mission statements was a call for people to come and build upon his successes and his failures,”said Dunlap, who remembers Zirkle shrugging off his successes by saying,”We have done it wrong so many times in the past that the only way left to do it was right.” The accident, announced on Guatemalan television by the country’s president, stunned the Living Waters missionaries.”Did we believe there was a risk? Yes. Did we believe this was going to happen? No,”said Dunlap.”But … there is a certain element of risk involved and in that … you have to determine if the goals you are striving for are worth the risk … I think that everyone on the missionary side has made that decision _ that what they are doing is worth risking their life for.” In addition to the Zirkles, Dunlap identified the dead as: Melvin Hughes, from Indiana; Thomas Vander Pool, Susan Aldridge, Dale Graff, Willard Gainger, Kevin Brittian, John Ronald Bryson and Christopher Brian Hanbirger. Hughes was believed to be from Indiana but state names and hometowns were not immediately available for the victims.

Dunlap, who said he had flown many times with the younger Zirkle, called it a routine mission. “James II was a very experienced Central American pilot,”Dunlap said.”He had close to 600 hours pilot experience in the DC-3 that he was flying and he was very talented and gifted in being a pilot … We have done things like this before _ at least a couple times a year.” Although the plane was a 1944 Douglas DC-3 cargo plane, Dunlap said it was in excellent condition and was equipped with seats and seatbelts like a normal passenger aircraft. “It was properly maintained and appearance-wise it had one of the lower operating hours in the world (for that model),”said Dunlap. The plane passed an FAA inspection within the last year in which Dunlap said it was called”one of the nicest operating DC-3’s that they (FAA) had ever seen.”

DEA END ROCKWOOD