Alaska villagers credited with saving crash survivors

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Two Western Alaska villages mustered a heroic community response that led to the rescue of six passengers from a plane crash Friday that killed four people.

Emergency responders credited local residents and health aides with saving passengers’ lives – finding the wreckage in the darkness outside the village of St. Marys and helping carry the survivors to safety. The single-engine Cessna 208, operated by Hageland Aviation, crashed in conditions described by local residents as foggy and frigid.

“The people on the ground, they’re the ones who should get the credit,” said Clifton Dalton, a paramedic for LifeMed Alaska, who flew into the village to help get the victims to Anchorage hospitals. “They’re the reason there are so many people that survived.”

The plane took off from Bethel at 5:40 p.m. Friday on a regularly scheduled flight to Mountain Village, which was to be followed by a stop in St. Marys, according to Steve Smith, a spokesman for Era Alaska, which owns Hageland Aviation.

An hour later, the airline was told that the plane had crashed near St. Marys without having arrived in Mountain Village. Smith said he did not have any more details about the pilot’s route.

First responders in St. Marys, a village of about 500, learned of the crash when one of the passengers, Melanie Coffee, called from a mobile phone to the village’s on-call health aide, said Fred Lamont Jr., a village police officer there.

Coffee made the call while giving CPR to her infant son, Wyatt, who died, Lamont said.

Forty to 50 local residents on foot and on snowmobiles began a search for the wreck, which was about 4 miles from St. Marys near the local landfill.

After heavy fog hindered initial efforts, Coffee eventually left the plane and walked to the landfill – which some witnesses said was as far as three-quarters of a mile away – where she found the search party, then showed the way back to the plane, Lamont said.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “She’s the hero in this.”

A stream of residents from St. Marys and Mountain Village made their way to the crash site to help, according to paramedics who flew in from Bethel to evacuate the injured passengers.

“People were just rolling in – a constant influx of snow machines, ATVs, trucks,” said Paul Garnet, one of the paramedics.

“There were so many people. They were doing everything. There were people clearing pathways through trash to make flat spots for us to walk,” he said.

The village residents carried each passenger out on a litter to waiting ambulances and vehicles, Garnet said, in an effort that was chaotic but ultimately effective.