A pilot and his two young daughters survived on the wing of a plane for about 12 hours, after it crashed and was partially submerged in an icy Alaska lake.
They were rescued after being spotted by a volunteer search pilot.
Alaska Army National Guard Terry Godes said he saw a Facebook post Sunday night calling for people to help search for the missing plane, which did not have a locator beacon.
On Monday morning, Godes and several other pilots headed out to scour the rugged terrain.
Godes flew towards Tustumena Lake, near the toe of a glacier, and spotted what he thought was wreckage.
“It kind of broke my heart to see that, but as I got closer down and lower, I could see that there’s three people on top of the wing,” he said.
After saying a prayer, he continued to approach and was amazed to seem them waving at him.
“They were alive and responsive and moving around,” Godes said.
The Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser, piloted by a man with this two young daughters on board, was on a sightseeing tour from Soldotna to Skilak Lake on the Kenai Peninsula when it went missing on Sunday.
The missing pilot’s father John Morris, had posted a message on social media imploring people to help search for his son and granddaughters, saying they were late returning from the sightseeing trip.
“There are friends ready to search at daylight,” he wrote. “But this is my plea for any and all help to locate my family.”
The three were rescued on the eastern edge of Tustumena Lake on Monday after Godes alerted other searching pilots that he had found the plane.
Another pilot, Dale Eicher, heard Godes’ radio call was also able to provide the plane’s coordinates to authorities.
“I wasn’t sure if we would find them, especially because there was a cloud layer over quite a bit of the mountains, so they could have very easily been in those clouds that we couldn’t get to,” Eicher said. But finding the family alive within an hour of starting the search “was very good news.”
Personnel reported that the girls were surprisingly dry but the man had been in the water at some point, Holbrook said: “We don’t know to what extent, but he was hypothermic.”
Lt. Col. Brendon Holbrook, commander of the 207th Aviation Regiment, who aided the rescue mission, said he was told they had basic clothing one would wear on small planes without very good heating systems, but nothing sufficient to keep warm outside in wintry temperatures with cold winds blowing on the lake.
“It was literally the best possible scenario and outcome,” Holbrook said. “Ultimately the crew of that airplane were lucky, because from what my guys told me, that plane was in the ice with the tail refrozen, and if that tail hadn’t refrozen, it would have sunk.”
The three were taken to a hospital with injuries that were not considered life-threatening, Alaska State Troopers said.
Godes said many “miracles” were at play, from the plane not sinking, to the survivors being able to stay on top of the wing, to them surviving nighttime temperatures dipping into the 20s (subzero Celsius).
“They spent a long, cold, dark, wet night out on top of a wing of an airplane that they weren’t planning on,” Godes said.
There was no indication yet why the plane crashed.
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