Crash survivors say plane aflame at once

KALISPELL, Mont. – The single-engine plane that crashed into a Montana mountain and killed three people was in flames before it came to rest, one of the two survivors has told authorities.

“Even before they stopped, there was fire in the aircraft,” Flathead County Sheriff Jim Dupont said Jodee Hogg told him. “She recalls tremendous pressure, heat and then a flash.

“Jodee was sitting right by the door,” he said. “She had the handle and she got the door open and virtually fell out when she undid her seatbelt.

“She turns around, reaches for Matt (Ramige) and his foot was caught. She was pulling on him and got him out,” Dupont recounted. “The fire was roaring at this point.”

Hogg also had checked on Davita Bryant, telling Dupont, “I saw blood in her hair and on her face and she wasn’t moving.”

“She grabbed her leg and she wasn’t moving and they had to get out because of the flames,” she sheriff said.

Hogg and the more seriously injured Ramige were the only two to survive.

Pilot Jim Long of Kalispell survived the initial impact in the Monday afternoon crash, and managed to unlatch the seatbelt of Ken Good and push him from the burning wreckage, Ryan Hogg, Jodee Hogg’s brother, said Friday. But neither Long, 60, nor Bryant, 32, of Whitefish, got out of the burning plane alive, and Good, 58, of Whitefish, died of his injuries at the crash site.

Hogg and Ramige walked off the mountain together over the next two days.

Ramige, 29, had a broken spine and severe burns. The Jackson, Wyo., man is being treated at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Hogg, 23, from Billings, was recovering from burns and bruises Friday at Kalispell Regional Hospital.

Neither survivor has given an interview, and Jodee Hogg’s brother said she would not until after some recovery time had passed. The survivors have talked of their ordeal to family, physicians and authorities, however, some of whom have passed on details of the crash and of their survival.

The plane crashed in stormy weather while ferrying the four Forest Service workers to a grass landing strip in the Great Bear-Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex where they were to do vegetation surveys and repair telecommunications equipment.

Ryan Hogg said his sister and Ramige huddled with Good under a makeshift shelter crafted from some of the plane wreckage the night after the crash near Glacier National Park.

“The three used each other’s body heat to stay warm throughout the night,” he said.

But Good died the following morning, and Hogg and Ramige set off on foot down the side of Mount Liebig. Before leaving the crash site, they arranged the plane’s red-striped doors so that they would stand out against the surrounding snow and draw searchers, Dupont said.

Hogg and Ramige slept that night under a tree, Ryan Hogg said.

After a 29-hour, 5-mile hike, they reached a highway and flagged down a motorist who called for help.

Paramedic Lance Westgard, one of those responding, said Hogg wanted to talk to her mom and dad.

“She was just worried about her family,” he said. “They probably think I’m dead,” he recalled her saying.

“Well, yeah, they do,” Westgard told her.