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Q: An Alaska official says military rescuers have arrived at the scene of a plane crash in southwest Alaska. 
  
 FILE - In this Feb. 17, 2005 file photo, Sean O'Keefe, answers questions at a news conference on the Baton Rouge campus of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, La. (AP Photo/Bill Feig, File) (Associated Press) 
  
 Authorities say the plane was carrying nine people, and that five were believed to be dead. Former Sen. Ted Stevens and ex-NASA chief Sean O'Keefe were believed to be aboard, but it was unclear if they were among the dead. 
  
 Alaska National Guard spokesman Maj. Guy Hayes says rescuers arrived on helicopter early Tuesday and were giving medical care to survivors. He offered no additional details, except that there were potential fatalities. 
  
 THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. 
  
 JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) _ A plane carrying nine people crashed amid southwest Alaska's remote mountains and lakes, killing five people on board, authorities said Tuesday. Former Sen. Ted Stevens and ex-NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe were believed to be aboard, but it was unclear if they were among the dead. 
  
 Reports from officials in Alaska were that nine people were aboard the aircraft and that "it appears that there are five fatalities," NTSB spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz told The Associated Press in Washington. 
  
 A U.S. government official told The Associated Press that Alaska authorities have been told that the 86-year-old Stevens, a former longtime Republican senator, was on the plane. The official, who spoke on grounds of anonymity, says Stevens' condition is unknown. 
  
 The federal official declined to be publicly identified because the crash response and investigation are under way. 
  
 Stevens was one of two survivors in a 1978 plane crash at Anchorage International Airport that killed his wife, Ann, and several others. 
  
 Defense contractor EADS North America said Tuesday morning that O'Keefe, the CEO of the U.S.-based division of the European company, was a passenger on the small plane. The company said it had no further information about O'Keefe's status. 
  
 Alaska National Guard spokesman Maj. Guy Hayes said the Guard was called to the area about 20 miles north of Dillingham at about 7 p.m. Monday after a passing aircraft saw the downed plane. But severe weather has hampered search and rescue efforts. 
  
 Hayes said five people were on scene early Tuesday helping the crash victims. It was unclear how they reached the site. 
  
 A second U.S. government official in Washington said Tuesday that the National Guard in Alaska reported a private medical team was dropped near the crash site by commercial helicopter Tuesday morning. Four of nine people aboard the plane survived, the official said. 
  
 Coast Guard Petty Officer David Mosley said the agency has a plane flying over the crash scene, scouting it to make sure it's safe for helicopters to come into the area with pararescuers. 
  
 The National Weather Service reported rain and fog at Dillingham, with low clouds and limited visibility early Tuesday. 
  
 Conditions ranged from visibility of about 10 miles reported at Dillingham shortly before 7 p.m. Monday to 3 miles, with rain and fog, reported about an hour later, according to the agency. 
  
 Steven and O'Keefe are longtime fishing buddies and the former senator had been planning a fishing trip near Dillingham, longtime friend William Canfield said. The flight in and out of Dillingham is an often perilous trip through the mountains even in good weather, Canfield said. 
  
 Stevens, a moderate Republican, was appointed to the Senate in 1968 and served longer than any other Republican in history. 
  
 He remarried several years after the 1978 crash _ he and his second wife, Catherine, have a daughter, Lily. 
  
 Over the years, Stevens directed billions of dollars to Alaska. But one of his projects _ infamously known as the "Bridge to Nowhere" _ became a symbol of pork-barrel spending in Congress and a target of taxpayer groups who challenged a $450 million appropriation for bridge construction in Ketchikan. 
  
 Stevens' standing in Alaska was toppled by corruption allegations and a federal trial in 2008. He was convicted of all seven counts _ and narrowly lost his Senate seat to Democrat Mark Begich in the election the following week. 
  
 But five months after the election, Attorney General Eric Holder sought to dismiss the indictment against Stevens and not proceed with a new trial because of prosecutorial misconduct by federal prosecutors. 
  
 Stevens' family thanked those trying to reach the site of a plane crash in southwest Alaska in a statement released Tuesday morning by a former Stevens chief of staff. 
  
 Lopatkiewicz said the NTSB is sending a team to the crash site. 
  
 In Washington, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said the aircraft is a DeHavilland DHC-3T registered to Anchorage-based General Communication Corp. 
  
 Dillingham is located in northern Bristol Bay, about 325 miles southwest of Anchorage. 
  
 ___ 
  
 Associated Press writers Pauline Jelinek and Natasha Metzler in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report. ||||| Former Sen. Stevens killed in crash near Dillingham Posted: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 3:03 AM EST Updated: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 11:26 PM EST 
  
 A longtime aide and family friend said Stevens was killed in the crash Monday night. (File/KTUU-DT) 
  
 by Channel 2 News staff 
  
 Monday, August 9, 2010 
  
 ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Former Sen. Ted Stevens and four other people were killed in a plane crash Monday. 
  
 Five of the nine passengers of a DeHavilland DHC-3 Otter were killed. Alaska State Troopers identified all of the victims in the crash Tuesday afternoon. 
  
 Dead are Stevens, the plane's pilot Terry Smith, 62, of Eagle River, Bill Phillips, Sr., Dana Tindall, 48 of Anchorage and her daughter, Corey Tindall, 16. 
  
 The four survivors were transported to Providence Hospital in Anchorage with varying degrees of injuries – they are William Phillips, Jr., 13, former NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe, 54, his son Kevin O'Keefe, and Jim Morhard of Alexandria, Va. 
  
 The remains of all five victims are being flown to Anchorage. 
  
 National Transportation Safety Board chairwoman Deborah Hersman said the plane left the Agulowak Lodge at around 3 or 3:15 to head to a camp to fish. The crash site was about a 15-minute flight away from the lodge. 
  
 She said that when the plane did not return to the lodge for dinner, lodge workers found out that the plane had never made it to fish camp in the first place, and they called out for help to look for the plane. 
  
 They discovered the crash site about 17 miles north of Dillingham in a mountainous area and alerted authorities using a satellite phone at around 7 p.m. Weather kept night rescue crews battling bad weather conditions from the scene overnight, where good Samaritans had already arrived and were providing medical assistance, said Air National Guard spokesperson Maj. Guy Hayes. A military C-130 and a Pave Hawk helicopter were waiting in Dillingham for the weather to break and reached the site just after 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, transporting some survivors to Anchorage for medical treatment. 
  
 Smith was the father-in-law of Maj. Aaron Malone, an Alaska National Air Guardsman who was killed in a C-17 crash two weeks ago while practicing for the military's air show. 
  
 Dana Tindall, a vice president for GCI, has been with the company for more than 24 years. She has also served as an adjunct professor at Alaska Pacific University. 
  
 Morhard is a Washington, D.C. lobbyist and the former chief of staff for the Senate Appropriations Committee. 
  
 Gov. Sean Parnell offered a tribute to the 86-year-old former senator at a press conference Tuesday. 
  
 Parnell said that while Stevens may have been small in stature, he was "larger than life." 
  
 "He built Alaska, he stood for Alaska and he fought for Alaskans," Parnell said. "Ted was a lion who retreated from nothing." 
  
 Parnell said he learned of the crash and the possibility that Stevens was on board the plane late Monday night, and was informed that the former Senator was among the dead Tuesday morning. 
  
 "As a state, as a country and as a globe we are experiencing a tragedy," Parnell said. "As citizens of Alaska we have a long road of grief to walk." 
  
 The National Transportation Safety Board has sent a "Go-Team" from Washington D.C. early Tuesday morning to the crash site. An NTSB official said the team is responsible for investigating the most high-profile and catastrophic crashes. ||||| Sean O’Keefe , a former NASA administrator, and his son Kevin were among those on board who survived. A spokeswoman for Providence Alaska Medical Center said that Mr. O’Keefe was in critical condition and that Kevin was listed as serious. Now an executive with the European aerospace firm EADS, Mr. O’Keefe was a longtime friend and fishing companion of Mr. Stevens. 
  
 Officials in Alaska said the plane, owned by GCI, an Alaska telecommunications provider, was first reported overdue about 7 p.m. on Monday by the company. The group had been staying at the company’s main lodge on Lake Aleknagik. 
  
 Deborah A. P. Hersman, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board , told reporters in Anchorage on Tuesday night that witnesses said the plane left GCI’s main lodge at the lake about 3:15 p.m. Monday on a day trip to a GCI fish camp nearby. Around 6 p.m., people at the lodge called the fish camp to see whether the party would be returning to the main lodge for dinner. Staff members at the fish camp said Mr. Stevens’s group had never arrived. 
  
 That prompted GCI to send up its own helicopter and other planes, which soon found the wreckage, at the end of a debris field about 100 yards long. Ms. Hersman said the witnesses speculated that the plane must have crashed about 15 minutes after taking off. 
  
 A doctor and two paramedics at the lodge were taken to the site by helicopter. One survivor, whom Ms. Hersman would not identify, was first seen walking outside the plane; the others were inside. The doctor and paramedics stayed with the victims overnight and communicated with rescue officials via satellite phone and handheld radio. 
  
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 The group had not filed a flight plan, and one was not required. Had they done so, aviation officials would have known sooner that the plane was missing. 
  
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 “Having no flight plan really screwed up the rescue,” said John Bouker, a longtime bush pilot in the Dillingham area who helped locate the crash site. “If we had known about this at 2 or 3 o’clock in the afternoon, we would have been on this four or five hours earlier.” 
  
 The authorities said weather and remoteness prevented military and Coast Guard personnel from reaching the crash site until about 7 a.m. Tuesday. It was unclear whether any of the victims, who spent the night at the crash site, could have fared better if they had been reached sooner. 
  
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 Mr. Bouker said the plane crashed about 1,000 feet up in the scrub of the Muklung Hills Range on a day when visibility was poor. 
  
 He said the pilot, Theron A. Smith, appeared to have been trying a sharp ascent when the plane crashed, perhaps realizing suddenly the proximity of mountains cloaked in the clouds. The authorities said the plane was found on a slope of about 40 degrees. 
  
 “The plane was in a steep incline,” Mr. Bouker said. “He bounced the airplane uphill once it hit. When you’re in the clouds, you don’t see nothing. He was going to try to climb out of the mountains and find somewhere where the weather was clear.” 
  
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 Mr. Bouker said he was joined in the search by several private pilots, including two helicopter pilots. 
  
 “The plane was not all broken apart,” Mr. Bouker said. “It looked survivable to me. There were four last night that were definitely alive when the helicopters got there.” 
  
 Alaska officials said three others died in addition to Mr. Stevens and Mr. Smith: William D. Phillips Sr., a former chief of staff for Senator Stevens and a Washington lawyer; Dana Tindall, 48, a 24-year employee and vice president for GCI in Anchorage; and her daughter, Corey, 16. 
  
 The four survivors were Mr. O’Keefe; his son; William Phillips Jr., 13; and James Morhard, chief of staff for the Senate Appropriations Committee when Mr. Stevens was its chairman. 
  
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 GCI executives often flew staff members, politicians and special guests from the Lower 48 to the handsome lodge for salmon fishing and sightseeing. Mike Porcaro, a local radio personality and advertising executive who has handled advertising for GCI since 1997, said he flew to the Aleknagik lodge last month on the same plane that crashed. The original engine in the plane, which had both wheels and floats, had been replaced with a turbine engine for power and stability, Mr. Porcaro said. 
  
 “The plane is old, but it was meticulously maintained,” he said. “It was gorgeous.” 
  
 Mr. Stevens was appointed to the Senate in 1968 and then elected to six terms. He had served for 40 years until he lost his bid for a seventh term in 2008 after he was found guilty of corruption charges. After the case was thrown out, Mr. Stevens, often called Uncle Ted in Alaska, seemed to retain much of his local stature. 
  
 “He weathered it pretty well,” former Gov. Bill Sheffield, a longtime friend, said of the scandal. “He felt good, looked good, walked faster than ever, played tennis several times a week.” |||||
A:
Ted Stevens was among the five people killed in a plane crash last night in remote western Alaska, a former aide to the ex-US senator tells KTUU in Anchorage. Former NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe was also believed to be among the nine people on the aircraft, but his fate is unknown, the AP reports. In 1978, Stevens survived a plane crash that killed 5 people, including his first wife, Ann, notes the New York Times.