CHILE: Six university officials killed in quake crash

07 March 2010

Six Chilean university administrators on a disaster surveillance mission were killed last Monday after their twin-engine aircraft crashed in a wooded area north of Concepción, the city near the epicentre of the devastating 27 February earthquake, according to university and news reports, writes Marion Lloyd for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Three victims of the crash were high-ranking officials at the private University of San Sebastián, whose main campus is in Concepción. They included Luis Ernesto Videla Berguecio, the university's Vice Rector of Economic and Administrative Affairs; Marcelo Ruiz Pérez, Dean of the Engineering Faculty; and Pablo Desbordes Jiménez, the university's National Director for Student Affairs. Rodolfo Becker Barría, Vice Rector of Administration and Communications at the Ipege Professional Institute, a technical college affiliated with the university, as well as two other administrators at the college were also killed.

The administrators were on their way to survey the damage to the university's Concepción campus and to provide assistance to its nearly 10,000 students and professors, the university said on Tuesday in a statement.
Full report on The Chronicle of Higher Education site

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