During an operation to test new tools, two researchers from the US hydrographic analysis company Seafloor Systems they identified the wreck of a small tourist plane at the bottom of Folsom Lake, near Sacramento, California. It is assumed that the wreck is that of a Piper Comanche 250 which crashed on January 1, 1965 and of which no remains had ever been found. According to researchers and local authorities, the discovery was made possible by the exceptionally low water levels of the lake, which like many other reservoirs in the state has been drained due to the severe drought of recent months.
In 1965 the local newspaper Roseville Press Tribune had written that the Piper had collided with another small tourist plane – a Beechcraft Debonair – at an altitude of about 800 meters and then crashed. All four people on board the Piper had been killed in the accident: the pilot’s body had been recovered but those of the other three passengers had not and not even the wreck, although the searches had continued on and off until 2014. .
Tyler Atkinson, one of the researchers at Seafloor Systems, he told on San Francisco TV KGO-TV that during the operation, a few weeks ago, he had noticed “something unusual” on the bottom of the lake through a sonar. Atkinson and other operators had therefore returned a few days later with a small radio-controlled exploration vehicle that had approached the still unidentified object, which was about 50 meters deep, but the water was too cloudy and it was not anyway. managed to understand what it was.
The researchers then returned to the site a third time with other tools that made it possible to obtain more detailed images of the object, realizing that it was a plane: the team could not distinguish the serial number or see inside. of the cabin, but the fuselage, engine, propellers and right wing were clearly visible.
56-year-old Northern California plane wreckage mystery may finally be solved at Folsom Lake https://t.co/JyR31rLLdX
— ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) June 14, 2021
Katherine Radican, wife of the brother of one of the people who died in the 1965 accident, he told ABC News that the plane was at a point on the lake where the American river flowed before the construction of the dam of the same name (1955), on the border between the county of Placer and that of El Dorado. Now the local authorities will have to decide if the wreck can be recovered, when and how.
– Read also: The unsolved case of the Somerton man
Both the researchers and the state authorities claim that it was possible to find the plane thanks to the period of great drought which caused the lake’s water levels to drop significantly and which brought out portions of land that are usually submerged.
In California, drought is a huge problem, which underlies the widespread and very serious fires that every year devastate hundreds of thousands of hectares of land and cause dozens of deaths and missing. Among other things, the waters of reservoirs such as Folsom Lake are essential for irrigating fields and for producing electricity.
According to data from the California Department of Water Resources, Folsom Lake is currently at 37 percent of its capacity, i.e. at their lowest levels since 1977. The causes are a particularly dry winter and the scarcity of rains, but also higher than average temperatures and a greater withdrawal of water in recent months. It has been calculated that in the first 155 days of 2021 more than a third more water was withdrawn from the lake than in the same period in 2014, and at the same time a sixth less water flowed into the basin than in the same period of the same year. , when the lowest levels had been recorded since the 1990s.
As of June 4, California’s 11 largest reservoirs were at 51 percent of their capacity, similar to 2014 levels.
The drought situation is so severe across California that Governor Gavin Newsom had as early as May 10 extended the state of emergency to 41 of the state’s 58 counties, including the three surrounding Folsom Lake. At the same time, due to higher than average temperatures, the snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains is melting at a faster rate than usual. However, this does not contribute to the health of the reservoirs, explained to SFgate Sean De Guzman, head of the California Department of Water Resources section that monitors snow levels and water supply forecasts, because melting snow does not have time to pour into reservoirs but is absorbed by the ground before you even get there.
