Thread: Plane Carrying U.S., Mexico Border Officials Missing

FOX NEWS

Plane Carrying U.S., Mexico Border Officials Missing

Monday, September 15, 2008

MARFA, Texas — A plane carrying the U.S. and Mexican heads of the International Water and Boundary Commission disappeared Monday while touring floods along the Rio Grande.

Commissioners Carlos Marin, of the U.S. section, and Arturo Herrera, from Mexico, were flying to Presidio, Texas, from El Paso but the plane did not land as scheduled, Presidio County Judge Jerry Agen said. The plane carried the pilot and one other passenger, he said.

The chartered Cessna 421 propeller plane left about 10 a.m. and was to fly over a reservoir in Mexico so the men could see a dam where water is being released to ease flooding, said Sally Spener, a spokeswoman for the IBWC in El Paso.

Agen said searchers were looking in a rough, mountainous section of desert about 60 miles west of Presidio. "It's a rough area out there, with very few roads," Agen said.

Spener said the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Border Patrol were involved in the search, though she could not confirm the search area.

Marin and Herrera head the international agency responsible for maintaining the border between the U.S. and Mexico. Each man's office inspects and maintains river levees along the Rio Grande.

In the river town of Presidio, the swollen Rio Grande has crawled up its levees, and both countries have evacuated residents in low-lying areas near the river.

Authorities fear that if the earthen levees fail, water would pour into Presidio and the Mexican town of Ojinaga.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,423027,00.html

Texas: Border Agency’s Plane Is Found in Mexico With All 4 on Board Dead

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 18, 2008

The Border Patrol said that it found the wreckage of a small plane that disappeared Monday while carrying top American and Mexican officials on a mission to survey flooding along the Rio Grande. There were no survivors. The International Boundary and Water Commission said all four aboard the plane died, including the heads of its American and Mexican sections. The Border Patrol said it located the wreckage shortly after noon Wednesday in a rugged section of the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico, about 20 miles northwest of Presidio. The dead included the leaders of the commission: Carlos Marin of El Paso and Arturo Herrera of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Also on board was Jake Brisbin Jr., executive director of the Rio Grande Council of Government, and the pilot, Matthew P. Juneau.

www.nytimes.com