Plane Crash Strengthens Survivor’s Faith Woman’s Father, Stepmother, Pilot Killed After Single-Engine Aircraft Hit Mountain

For Kathy Drovdahl, the airplane crash that killed her father and stepmother was a test of faith. And that faith survived.

The Jan. 14 plane crash on Blyn Mountain, about 10 miles east of Sequim, killed her father, Boone Cameron, 56, his wife Kathy, 47, and Coastal Airways pilot Chris Armstrong, 29. Drovdahl, 28, was the only survivor.

The passengers had about two minutes to contemplate their fate, she said.

She and her stepmother said prayers that Drovdahl cannot recall.

“I just remember asking for the Lord’s comfort,” she said.

She was so sure of that comfort, she said, she was fearless.

“The plane was filled with peace, it was not filled with fear,” Drovdahl told the Peninsula Daily News at her home in Carlsborg between Port Angeles and Sequim.

She sees the crash as a religious experience. She talks of it without tears as she sits in a wheelchair. Her hands do not shake and her voice does not tremble.

A brace holds her spine in place when she is out of bed a few hours each day. Her right leg, nearly severed in the crash, remains in a cast. Her right arm is weak. Both ankles were sprained. She tires easily and needs help from husband Jerry and his son Chris, 16.

“Compared to the injuries that I could have had and the injuries that other people sustained, I was fortunate,” said Drovdahl, who spent two weeks in a hospital and two more in a nursing home.

She is on the road to recovery, her positive attitude intact.

“It’s very clear that it was a miracle,” she said of her survival.

The family was flying in a chartered single-engine Cessna 172 from Sequim Valley Airport to SeaTac, the first leg of a vacation trip to Hawaii.

Ten minutes after taking off, violent turbulence shook the plane.

The pilot reported structural failure and turned the plane back toward Sequim.

The crippled plane flew until it hit the treetops.

“We heard a pop and felt the air rushing in,” she said.

The next thing she knew she was upside down in total darkness.

She could feel her stepmother on top of her. Kathy Cameron let out a couple of sighs and stopped breathing, Drovdahl remembered.

Drovdahl then called out to her father. She said God told her that her father was with him, and she felt better.

Kept warm by her stepmother’s body, Drovdahl remained there, barely able to move, with one arm pinned beneath her.

Paramedic Matt Newell arrived about six hours later. He stayed with her for two hours, reassuring her with prayer and songs until the logging road to the crash site could be cleared of fallen trees. Only then could an ambulance reach Drovdahl.

Though she was trapped in the wreckage for 10 hours, she said it was less horrific than it sounded.

“It felt like about three hours.”

Drovdahl said she has no bad dreams, flashbacks or haunting memories of the crash.

That only happens to people who go through traumatic events, she said. For her the tragedy has been an exercise in faith, strengthening her Christian beliefs.”It’s definitely a miracle of the Lord.”