Eight die in Colombian air force helicopter crash

BOGOTA, Nov 23 (Reuters) - A Colombian air force helicopter crashed in the jagged Andean mountains on Thursday, killing all eight people aboard, authorities said. The U.S.-made Bell helicopter was flying over a river in central Colombia"s Tolima province that had been clogged by recent rock and mud slides when it went down, apparently in adverse weather conditions, late on Thursday afternoon, air force officials said. They said the aircraft, with a crew of three, had flown to the area to give five civil engineers and government disaster experts a bird"s-eye view of obstructions to the Lagunilla River. The riverbed channeled an avalanche of mud and rocks that killed around 25,000 Colombians in November 1985, when the Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted in the worst natural disaster in the Andean nation"s modern history. Fears of another huge mudslide triggered a disaster alert in communities along the banks of the Lagunilla earlier this week. http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20001123_2045.html

-- Carl Jenkins (somewherepress@aol.com), November 23, 2000