Revisiting The Terror Scarred And Still Recovering, Paramedic Returns To Site Of Plane Crash That Only He Survived

Harold Livingston faces surgery for a knee that barely bends. His arms and hands bear the scars of severe burns.

On Thursday, though, he felt like the luckiest man alive as he returned for the first time to the site of the air ambulance crash that nearly killed him in January.

“It’s almost like it was just a bad dream,” said Livingston, 24, surveying an industrial building demolished by the plane.

The Finley, Wash., flight paramedic was the sole survivor when the twin-engine Cessna veered off course and blasted through the Ace Tank & Equipment Co. shop near Hayford Road and Highway 2.

Killed were pilot David Brooks, nurse Vicki Collman and Linda Fritts, a patient they were transporting from Pasco to the Spokane International Airport.

The shop has been refurbished, but workers there handed Livingston a scrapbook of photographs of the wreckage.

“I can’t really recognize anything,” Livingston said quietly, studying the pictures.

“There wasn’t really much left to recognize,” said Bernie Bernsdorf, a volunteer firefighter who helped rescue Livingston.

“It was a white plane with blue stripes,” Livingston offered.

“We found the blue - just a little bit of it,” said Bernsdorf.

Under sunny skies, the two retraced their steps, piecing together what happened the dark, foggy night of Jan. 8, after the plane clipped a nearby telephone pole.

“I looked at the pilot and he looked at me,” Livingston said. “There was a look of sheer terror on his face. I told the nurse to assume the crash position. Then I just curled up in a ball and waited.”

Minutes after the crash, Bernsdorf and other rescuers had trouble getting into the locked building. When they did, they spotted a trail of blood next to the plane.

Following it around the leaping flames, they found Livingston, covered with burns and screaming for help through a small hole in the building, Bernsdorf recalled.

For a moment Thursday, Livingston found some humor in that image and chuckled.

“That had to be a sight to see. Something out of a horror movie or something.”

Livingston has since spent two months in hospitals and undergone 11 surgeries. Doctors will operate on his knee at least one more time on Monday.

Physical therapy five days a week replaces his job as a paramedic with Aeromed, the company that owned the plane.

On Thursday, he celebrated at Sacred Heart Medical Center with the health workers he credits with saving his life.

Then he made the long-awaited drive to the crash site with his cousin, Ronda Nilsen, and Bernsdorf.

“I just wanted to retrace my steps and figure out what happened,” he said.

Livingston would like to be a paramedic again someday, or at least teach future paramedics. He’s certain, however, his future career won’t involve airplanes.

“A lot of people tell me, ‘It’s just like riding a horse. You have to get back on,”’ said Livingston.

“I’ve never had a horse buck me off at 200 miles an hour into the side of a building.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo