Pilot describes scene from Alaska crash site

DILLINGHAM, Alaska - One of the pilots who saw the wreckage of the amphibious plane carrying former Sen. Ted Stevens, his fishing companions and their families strewn across a mountainside remembers thinking: No one could've survived.

Then, he heard another pilot say on the radio: A hand was waving for help from a window of the red-and-white aircraft.

"It surprised me," said Eric Shade, 48, owner of Shannon's Air Taxi.

Within hours, a fishing trip that Stevens and his friends have made for years to a southwest Alaska lodge ended with five dead, including the state's most revered politician, and four survivors.

The cause of the crash was being investigated yesterday, but officials said a technology that Stevens had long pushed to improve air safety in Alaska wasn't installed in the downed plane. It was unclear whether the instruments would have prevented the crash Monday night.

Medical volunteers who scrambled up the muddy, boulder-strewn slopes to the crash site found the survivors trapped in the fuselage, with one still strapped into the co-pilot seat, and five dead nearby.

Stevens, 86, had close ties to everyone on the plane, as well as to Anchorage-based General Communications Inc., a phone and Internet company that owned the plane. GCI executive Dana Tindall and her daughter Corey, 16, died in the crash, as did William Phillips Sr.Stevens and ex-NASA commanderSean O'Keefe, who survived, were fishing companions.Phillips and survivor Jim Morhard worked with Stevens in Washington as lobbyists. The fifth victim was pilot Theron "Terry" Smith.