Plane crash claims two near Wasilla

WASILLA — Two people died Tuesday in a plane crash near Vienna Woods Access.

Pilot Paul Reinders, 72, of Wasilla, and passenger Robert Whitesell, 63, of Mustang, Okla., were the only people in the plane when it went down.

A call to Santa Rosa, Calif., to a number listed to Reinders in a small-plane community newsletter was answered by his daughter, Gretchen Reinders, who said she lives in Alaska, but was in California in a rented condo taking care of her mother.

“It’s total shock for us,” she said, but declined to speak further, saying she didn’t have the time between everything she had to do in the wake of her father’s death.

She said Reinders was a resident of Wasilla and had a house very close to Kalmbach Lake where the plane went down.

Alaska State Troopers say the identification of the two men is tentative and that they’re waiting on dental records before they can positively identify the two victims. They say locating the records “may take considerable time.”

Troopers, firefighters and rescue technicians were called to the scene at about 10 a.m. The floatplane had gone down in a secluded area near Kalmbach Lake.

In a trooper press release, the plane is said to have taken off from the lake moments before the crash.

Wreckage was found on fire in the middle of Kalmbach Lake Trail, just up the road from where two planes on wheels were parked. One ambulance and a half-dozen fire trucks from both the West Lakes and Central Mat-Su fire departments were on hand.

Crews quickly doused the blaze and troopers took over the scene before handing it over to the National Transportation Safety Board.

The Federal Aviation Administration lists the plane as a Zenair Stol CH701 and says that the plane crashed for unknown reasons. The NTSB had not released a preliminary report as of press time.

FAA databases list Reinders as the registered owner of the plane. An FAA pilot-license database lists only one Paul Reinders, showing he has current licenses as a private and commercial pilot, a flight instructor and a builder of experimental aircraft.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.