The small plane carrying only its American pilot disappeared 10 days ago just miles from a refueling stop at a West African island in the middle of a tropical storm of thunder and lightning.
Since then, searches with a plane and boats have found no trace of the pilot, 54-year-old missionary Jerry Krause, or the twin-engine Beechcraft 1900C that he was flying from South Africa to Mali.
Krause’s family in Mali, where he has lived for 16 years, and in Waseca, Minnesota, believes he is alive and has launched a multifaceted campaign to “find Jerry.” Family members are lobbying officials, posting messages on social media and a Web site www.findjerry.com as well as using the Internet to encourage a relay of prayers for his safe return.
Krause’s last contact was apparently with the control tower at Sao Tome island, a couple of kilometers north of the equator and 150 miles (240 kilometers) from the coast of Gabon.
“We have no idea what happened to him,” Januario Barreto, the control tower chief, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
He said Krause called in to say he was 9 miles (14 kilometers) from the island when lightning struck the tower in a thunderstorm and knocked out the power. That was just before 4 p.m. local time (1600 GMT), still in daylight, on Sunday, April 7. When generators kicked in and the power returned, soon afterward, Krause could no longer be reached, Barreto said.
He said air traffic controllers immediately contacted the nearest control towers on the African mainland at Libreville, Gabon and Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, to see whether they had heard from Krause. They had not.
Navy and Coast Guard vessels are still looking for any trace of Krause’s plane but have found nothing, Barreto said.
But while the Sao Tome control tower contacted others on the mainland, it did not inform of the missing plane until almost 24 hours after the disappearance, according to Eric van der Gragt, owner of the Bamako, Mali-based Sahel Air Aviation charter company where Krause works as general manager.
“The tower just didn’t inform people that he had disappeared,” van der Gragt said in a telephone interview.
He said he
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/uWe11UDxA4A/