A sobbing Jaime Harrell called her pastor late in the afternoon on the last day in January. She gasped for air, trying to force the words out that the Arkansas Forestry Commission air controllers had lost contact with the plane piloted by her husband, Jake Harrell.
“I had trouble understanding her through her tears. She was shaken. I was shaken,” the senior pastor, Rod Loy, said during a memorial service Saturday to honor the 33-year-old pilot, soldier and police officer whose body was recovered Tuesday after an 11-day search.
After the call from Jaime Harrell, Loy immediately sprang into action, breaking the bad news to Jake Harrell’s mother and father.
About 12:40 p.m. Jan. 31, Jake Harrell took off in a Cessna 210 from the Malvern Municipal Airport on a fire-detection flight over a section of the Ouachita National Forest between Malvern and Wickes. It was a routine two-hour flight during one of the Forestry Commission’s most active wildfire seasons in January.
He called in shortly after takeoff once he’d crossed the Garland-Montgomery county line. Harrell continued heading toward the national forest, checking in at 1:11 p.m. - the standard call pilots make each half hour - to let dispatchers know he planned to cut the northern leg of the flight short and start heading south.
“It was a completely normal, regular check-in,” State Forester Joe Fox said. “There was nothing in his voice that alarmed anybody.”
But dispatchers never heard from him again.
They called him over the radio. No response.
By 2 p.m., the Forestry Commission mobilized its troops - calling ground personnel to see whether they knew Harrell’s whereabouts and messaging rangers and foresters to check small, local airports from Mount Ida to De Queen.
“We checked lots of places,” Fox said. “There’s all sorts of things we dreamed up.”
The Forestry Commission quickly set up an Incident Command Center at the U.S. Forest Service ranger station in Mena. There, representatives from several local, state and national agencies holed themselves up for the next 12 days, planning the next stages of what became the state’s most extensive search in history.
Loy, who officiated Jake and Jaime Harrell’s wedding about six years ago, took on the role of family spokesman. He relayed countless updates and messages between the Harrell family and the authorities who pulled together to find the part-time Arkansas Forestry Commission pilot.
The search proved frustrating for searchers, who remained motivated despite the less-than-ideal weather conditions, and was emotionally harrowing for his family and countless others who continuously prayed for his safe return.
“I know God is with Jake, or Jake is with God,” his mother, Pam Harrell, said during the search efforts, according to Loy. “Either way, that’s OK.”
Crews combed more than 200 miles that first Friday and Saturday, searching on foot and with all-terrain vehicles. Authorities contacted Harrell’s cellphone company to attempt to track his location.
The conditions were treacherous with thick brush, steep terrain - which in places was nearly vertical - and hardwood- and pine-lined trails.
The rescue efforts were further hampered when a winter storm struck the search area. Ground crews were restricted by icy roads, and helicopters were grounded because of poor visibility. Searchers waited for slivers of breaks in the weather to restart their efforts.
But they didn’t stop working.
Staff from the Forestry Commission; U.S. Forest Service; Arkansas Game and Fish Commission; Arkansas National Guard; Civil Air Patrol; Arkansas State Police; Arkansas Department of Emergency Management; and Polk, Scott and Montgomery counties sheriffs’ offices, huddled around a long table in a room at the ranger station, strategizing their next move.
Maps were pinned to boards and walls to track possible routes and mark areas already covered by ground and air crews.
An enlarged picture of Jake and Jaime Harrell hung on a wall. On the other side of the room, a board read “Jake, We’re Coming.”
Offers of help from all over the state flooded the command post. Residents in or near Harrell’s flight path called in tips: plane sightings and aircraft sounds.
Not wanting to discount any possibilities, authorities expanded the search area. At the same time, they started stringing together parts of the puzzle, picking up the coordinates where his cellphone and radio last received signal.
One winter storm after another continued to hit the search area.
“We have steep, nasty, ice storm-ridden, snow-capped hills out here,” Forestry Commission spokesman Adriane Barnes said. “And it’s nasty. It’s the Ouachita National Forest: There are places out here that people just don’t go. It’s untouched. It’s lovely. It’s dangerous.”
The days dragged on without a sign of Harrell, but searchers never relented.
“We were all bound together by a mission to bring Jake home. None of us were leaving until that was accomplished,” Barnes said. “What motivated us - Jake’s sweet son, Jake’s lovely wife, Jake’s powerful community of friends, Jake’s spirit and compassion, Jake’s life of dedication - all of which was worth every moment of the search journey.”
On the 11th day, the weather cleared for the first time since the search had begun.
“Today is the day,” Incident Commander Billy Black pronounced in a news release that morning.
That afternoon, an Arkansas Civil Air Patrol crew spotted the orange stripes on Harrell’s fixed-wing, single-engine plane. A state police helicopter then circled the area, confirming the sighting, and an Arkansas National Guardsman was dropped to the ground.
“Everyone went silent as we waited for word on Jake,” said Loy, who was at the crash site. “When we got confirmation, everyone stayed silent.”
More than 200 searchers traced then retraced nearly 2.6 million acres.
“We knew we flew the area [where] he was found at least two times before,” Fox said.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash and has not released a preliminary report.
“All we can do is speculate,” Fox said. “We have and had every confidence in Jake.”
Harrell, an experienced pilot with numerous ratings, was assigned to the area in and around the national park. He’d flown the route just four days before he disappeared.
The Forestry Commission’s aviation supervisor took the same plane out without incident the morning Harrell disappeared.
Planes are checked “very thoroughly” every 100 hours, Fox said. It had only been 35 hours since Harrell’s plane had last been serviced.
“We know we had a low ceiling in Mena around the time of his flight,” Fox said. “We speculate that he went down on a flight path from Oden to Wickes and went down that line and discovered the weather was deteriorating and probably turned back to get back to Malvern.”
Fox also speculated the plane clipped the top of the mountain, as parts of the plane ended up on different sides of the mountain.
Nevertheless, weather conditions, bad cellphone service and a faulty emergency locator transmitter - a beacon transmitter that sends a signal to air traffic controllers after a crash - hampered search efforts, Fox said.
During his funeral Saturday, a crowd of about 2,000 watched as the Honor Guard presented Jaime Harrell with the flag for her husband’s service and the military gave a final salute.
Harrell wore many hats. The North Little Rock native served 14 years in the Arkansas Air National Guard, deploying overseas three times with the 188th Fighter Wing.The technical sergeant earned five service medals.
He joined the Forestry Commission in 2005, eventually moving to a full-time pilot status, but returned to part-time status. In January 2012, he joined the North Little Rock Police Department, breezed through the training academy and spent a month in field training before his last deployment.
“He’s from a family of doers,” Loy said. “He was happiest when he was working.”
Not only that: The Henderson University graduate would rearrange his own life to improve someone else’s, family friend Brian Dollar said.
“There was no such thing as a lost cause,” he said. “He was determined to be the answer.”
Harrell was always passionate about flying, starting lessons at 14. He would take friends on flights across the state.
Friends remembered him as reliable.
He lent a helping hand from a very young age, giving his lunch, his money and even his coat away to other children, Loy said. Even abroad, when other soldiers didn’t have families, Harrell asked his mother to send them packages so they would have something during mail call.
During December’s ice storms, Harrell packed up his own tools, handing them out to other church members, and shoveled the ice topping the parking lot so a family he didn’t know could still have a funeral.
“He was always looking out for the little guy,” Dollar said. “He felt like it was his duty.”
Everyone knew it was a possibility Harrell wouldn’t make it, Dollar said. Still, the news of Harrell’s death came as a “a two-by-four to the face,” he said.
“All your strength leaves you. You just want to collapse,” he said. “But we got together and thanked God for giving us strength. His comfort has been what sustained [his family].”
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 02/16/2014