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The Rescue Story
On August 13,
1993, while returning from a mission in the Russian Far East town of
Lavrentiya, a charter missionary plane with seven on board lost one
engine at 7,000 feet and the other, 9 minutes later, at 3,500 feet.
The plane fell 3,500 feet in 3 1/2 minutes and plowed into the
Bering Sea at 90 MPH.
It took the seven on board this flight
about one minute to get out of the aircraft; one minute later the
plane sank.
On board were: Dave and Barb Anderson from
Phoenix, Arizona, keyboardist Cary Dietsche from Amery, Wisconsin,
singer/songwriter Don Wharton from Nashville, Tennessee,
soundman/roadie Brian Brasher from St. Louis, Missouri, passenger
Pam Swedberg from Kenai, Alaska, and pilot Dave Cochran from
Soldotna, Alaska.
The group found themselves in 3'-5'
swells, 2 1/2 miles west of Sledge Island; 22 1/2 miles west of
Nome, Alaska; about 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle.
The water temperature was about 36F degrees. (Life
expectancy is between 5 and 15 minutes in 36-degree water).
They had no life-jackets or a raft but they did hang on to
5-gallon gas cans which were inside the plane, being brought back to
Alaska empty to be filled for possible future humanitarian and
missionary flights back to the Russian Far East.
Anchorage
Air Traffic Controllers heard the pilot's distress calls as each
engine quit. After several minutes they were able to contact a
Bering Air flight in the area, asking the pilot if he had "seen
anything" as he flew along the same route as the ill-fated
missionary plane. His recorded response was, "eight minutes ago we
thought we saw the tail of a whale; it could have been the tail of a
plane"!
Returning to the approximate crash area, he circled
for a number of minutes, and, just before giving up, a passenger
said, "go around one more time; I think I saw something". Shortly
afterwards they reported that some people appeared to be still
alive, splashing in the water. The crash victims were spotted twenty
minutes after the crash.
Twenty more minutes went by before
two helicopters came from Nome...neither of which was equipped to
rescue anyone from anything! Aboard one of the helicopters, besides
the pilot, were two men (an Evergreen Aviation mechanic and a
volunteer from the Nome Fire Department) and seven body bags.
Besides the other helicopter's pilot was one passenger, a Candian
geophysical surveyor.
For twenty-five minutes these
helicopter pilots lowered their aircraft down to and into the swells
of Norton Sound. The men aboard had to get out of the helicopters
and reach out to totally helpless people and try, with incredible
commitment, to get them into the helicopters one and two at a time.
They were placed on the top of Sledge Island--760' above the
water--and then the helicopters returned to the ocean to rescue
another person or two.
Dave Anderson, Cary Dietsche, and
Dave Cochran were in the water about 45 minutes. Don Wharton, Barb
Anderson, and Pam Swedberg were in the water about 55 minutes. Brian
Brasher was in the water 65 minutes.
As Dave Miles, Barb
Anderson's rescuer, reached out to her he hung on to the helicopter
with one hand and making contact with Barb with the other. Once he
held her arm, he could not get her into the aircraft because the
fibre-filled coat she was wearing weighed 50 lbs (wet). So he put
her neck between his knees, twisted his feet around her body, and
told the pilot to "take off". The pilot took off and Barb dangled by
her neck for 2 1/2 miles and then 150 feet from Sledge Island, she
fell from his grasp, back into the water the second time. Dave Miles
risked his life to save her the second time!
Eventually all
seven missionaries were placed on the top of Sledge Island and were,
along with their rescuers, repositioned in the two helicopters and
flown to the Nome airport where ambulances were waiting to take them
to the Norton Sound Regional Medical Center.
In 1994 the two
helicopter pilots, Eric Penttila of Evergreen Aviation and Walt
Greaves of ERA Aviation, were honored for having done the most
heroic helicopter flying in the entire world in 1993!
Barbara Anderson's rescuer, Dave Miles, was the only
Canadian in history to receive the American "Medal of Heroism", the
highest award the US Government gives to a civilian for heroism.
According to Dave Anderson, "all 13 people involved in our
rescue are heros and we don't let them forget that we appreciate
what they did to bring about our rescue from totally impossible
circumstances".
This story has been told in a book and video
called, "The Rescue".
Download the Rescue Flyer in PDF here, or in editable Word format suitable for concert promotions here |
