Blocked fuel line cited in Dec. airplane crash
An airplane crash that killed three people at Centennial Airport last December was caused in part by a blocked fuel line that affected both engines shortly after the plane left the ground, federal investigators said Friday.
The National Transportation Safety Board released its final report on the Dec. 17 crash that killed Nadia Barghelame, 20, of Fort Collins; Craig Markley, 72, of Fort Collins; and Roy Crain, 60, of Taylor, Mich. All three were pilots.
“Contributing factors were a partially blocked fuel line resulting in restricted fuel flow, the instructor’s failure to perform critical emergency procedures and his failure to abort the takeoff in a timely manner,” the report said.
The report doesn’t name any of the victims, but said the pilot in command was 60 years old.
The NTSB also said the engines had quit twice before the plane began to taxi for takeoff.
The pilot reported an unspecified engine problem before the plane drifted across the median and a parallel runway, the report said. The plane then rolled to the right, struck the ground and cartwheeled, destroying the plane.
No problems were found with the right engine, the report said.
But an examination of the left engine and its fuel-control system revealed fuel-flow equipment somehow jammed on a low-flow setting.
License clerk handed 18-month prison term
A clerk who sold driver’s licenses to people who weren’t qualified to get them was sentenced Friday to 18 months in federal prison.
Virginia Villegas, 49, admitted selling driver’s licenses on at least 15 occasions.
She told U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham that she made a “horrible mistake.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney William Taylor said that Villegas’ sentencing should send a message to other public officials who contemplate such illegal actions.
Labor Dept. meetings for energy workers
The United States Department of Labor will host two town-hall meetings Nov. 7 and 8 to discuss new rules governing a nuclear-worker compensation program.
Labor officials will discuss the implementation of Part E of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act. Part E, which replaces a Department of Energy program, provides compensation for energy workers who became ill as a result of exposure to toxic substances.
To date, more than $207 million has been paid to 1,627 recipients under the new program.
The first meeting will be Nov. 7 at 7 p.m. at the Arvada Center for the Arts & Humanities, 6901 Wadsworth Blvd.
The second meeting will take place at the center on Nov. 8 at 3 p.m.
Navajos urged to attend ski-area trial
Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. and Council Speaker Lawrence T. Morgan have called on Navajos to travel to a federal district courtroom in Prescott, Ariz., on Wednesday to witness the resumption of a trial pitting several Four Corners tribes against the U.S. Forest Service and Arizona Snowbowl ski area.
The Navajo, Hopi and several other regional tribes have sued the agency and ski-area owners for preventing the free exercise of their religions through a plan to further develop the ski area near Flagstaff.
The tribes and the Sierra Club allege that environmental harm will be done by the use of recycled wastewater to make snow on the San Francisco Peaks, which are held sacred by at least a dozen tribes.
The Navajo Nation has sponsored a bus to carry tribal members from Window Rock to the federal courthouse in Prescott.
The Navajo leaders, in a joint statement issued late last week, said: “The Navajo Nation is facing a critical time in the history of our people. … The integrity of our culture and our way of life is under attack.”
Reward offered in killing of bull moose
The National Park Service is offering a reward for information about the killing of a bull moose in the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway last month.
Grand Teton National Park spokeswoman Jackie Skaggs said Friday the agency was offering a reward of up to $1,000 for information about the killing.
The moose was found dead Sept. 22 off Grassy Lake Road in the parkway, Skaggs said.
