Anchorage, Alaska — 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, then were rescued after being spotted by a good Samaritan.
Terry Godes said he saw a Facebook post Sunday night calling for people to help search for the missing plane, which didn’t have a locator beacon.
On Monday morning, about a dozen pilots including Godes headed out to scour the rugged terrain. Godes headed toward 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 told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
After saying a prayer, he continued to approach and saw a miracle.
“They were alive and responsive and moving around,” Godes said, adding that they waved at him.
Alaska National Guard via AP
The missing Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser was on a sightseeing tour from Soldotna to Skilak Lake on the Kenai Peninsula.
It wasn’t immediately clear how old the daughters are but the Alaska State Troopers confirmed to Alaska station KTUU-TV Monday that they were of elementary and middle school ages.
In a social media post early Monday, John Morris implored people to help search for his son and granddaughters, saying they were late returning from a Sunday afternoon flight.
“There are friends ready to search at daylight. But this is my plea for any and all help to locate my family,” he wrote.
Morris praised the Kenai community for its help in the search, telling KTUU he has “air in my lungs again.”
How the rescue happened
The three were rescued on the eastern edge of Tustumena Lake on Monday by the Alaska Army National Guard after Godes alerted other searching pilots that he had found the wreckage.
Another pilot, Dale Eicher, heard Godes’ radio call and relayed it to troopers since he was closer to Skilak Lake and figured he had better cell reception. He 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.”
The three were taken to a hospital with injuries that weren’t considered life-threatening, the State Troopers said.
Godes said many miracles were at work, from the plane not sinking, to the survivors being able to stay atop the wing, to them surviving nighttime temperatures dipping into the 20s.
“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.
Alaska has few roads, leaving many communities to rely on small airplanes to get around.
Last month, 10 people died when a small commuter plane that was overweight by half a ton crashed onto sea ice in the Norton Sound, near Nome on the state’s western coast.
And five years ago, a midair collision near the Soldotna airport claimed seven lives, including that of a state lawmaker.
For this week’s rescue, the National Guard dispatched a helicopter from its base in Anchorage.
The initial plan of using a hoist to pluck them from the wing proved too dangerous, as the the smallest girl was being buffeted and blown around by the wind created by the helicopter, said Lt. Col. Brendon Holbrook, commander of the 207th Aviation Regiment. So instead the aircraft hovered to the side and pulled them on board.
Personnel reported that the girls were surprisingly dry but the man had been in the water at some point, Holbrook said, noting that, “We don’t know to what extent, but he was hypothermic.”
Holbrook 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.”
A challenging environment
The 60,000-acre Tustumena Lake, the largest freshwater body on the Kenai Peninsula, is about 80 miles southwest of Anchorage, with nearby mountains and a glacier.
Google Maps
It’s been described by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game as “notorious for its sudden, dangerous winds,” with conditions that can cause havoc for both boats and planes.
“The terrain helps turn the winds around, and occasionally they get a little squirrelly,” said Michael Kutz, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Anchorage.
Godes agreed that the area is always windy and the water can be whipped up into waves.
“Then just the way it’s placed right there at the heel of that, or at the toe of that glacier where you’ve got mountains on both sides, you know, just a few miles to the west, you’ve got Cook Inlet running back and forth with huge temperature and tidal swings every day,” he said. “It’s just a recipe for chaos and for turbulence.”
There was no indication yet why the plane crashed.
Mark Ward, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board’s Alaska division, said the pilot hadn’t yet reported the accident, nor had the agency been able to contact him. Efforts were to be made again Wednesday to speak to him.
