Minister ‘swims 12 hours’ to shore after helicopter crash at sea

A Madagascan minister was one of two survivors to have swum around 12 hours to shore on Tuesday after their helicopter crashed off the island’s north-eastern coast, authorities said.

A search was still ongoing for two other passengers after the crash Monday, whose cause was not immediately clear, police and port authorities said.

Serge Gelle, the country’s secretary of state for police, and a fellow policeman reached land in the seaside town of Mahambo separately on Tuesday morning, apparently, after ejecting themselves from the aircraft, port authority chief Jean-Edmond Randrianantenaina said.

In a video shared on social media, 57-year-old Gelle appears lying exhausted on a deck chair, still in his camouflage uniform.

“It’s not my time to die,” says the general, adding he is cold but not injured.

The helicopter was flying him and the others to inspect the site of a shipwreck off the north-eastern coast on Monday morning. 

At least 39 people died in that disaster, police Chief Zafisambatra Ravoavy said on Tuesday, in an increase from a previous toll after rescue workers retrieved 18 more bodies.

About Serge Gelle, Ravoavy said, “He has always had great stamina in sport, and he’s kept up this rhythm as minister, just like a thirty-year-old.”

Gella became minister as part of a cabinet reshuffle in August after serving in the police for three decades.

ARR