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Posted on 07/03/2007 8:31:50 PM PDT by Paleo Conservative
Chris Fogg, a critical care nurse and a resident of Idaho in US had a miraculous escape while traveling by an air ambulance.
He was flying with a patient and the pilot last Wednesday from Twin Falls, Idaho, to Seattle when a window was blown off. At that time they were flying at a height of 20,000 ft.
Rapid decompression occurred when Fogg was unbuckled from his seat and reaching for a water bottle. Fogg's head and right arm were pulled outside the window, and he suffered cuts to his head. Some equipment, charts, his eye glasses and packages went flying out of the cabin.
Fogg, 41, is 6 feet tall and weighs 220 pounds. He said his size may have helped him avoid being sucked out of the twin-engine turboprop plane.
"My left hand was on the ceiling and was holding me in, and my knees were up against the wall," Fogg told The Seattle Times in a story published Monday. He said he pushed as hard as he could and got enough air between his chest and the window to break the suction and pull himself back inside the aircraft.
"I have a vivid picture of looking at the tail of the plane and seeing my headset dangling out of the plane," Fogg said.
He fell back into his seat, and grabbed one of the patient's pillows to stop the blood pouring from his head. He said the pilot knew the cabin had decompressed but was not aware of the broken window, so he put the airplane into a dive to a safe altitude of 10,000 feet.
"I kept saying, 'Don't pass out, don't pass out, I have a patient on board and I have to take care of the patient,"' he said.
Fogg said the patient, who saw the whole thing, was not in danger because he was on oxygen. The man was a Vietnam veteran and told Fogg he had flashbacks of being shot out of the air.
The pilot made an emergency landing in Boise, and Fogg was rushed to the hospital, where he needed 13 stitches in his head.
Fogg has worked for the Ada-Boi air ambulance service for 24 years, which his father owns. The next day he was back at work.
"It was pretty scary, I'll tell you that," Fogg said.
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Ok,, when was the last Heavy ‘D” check done on this aircraft?
Was there a Gremlin on the wing?
Wow!
Why don’t these happen to Democrat politicans ?
Teddy’s too fat to be sucked out the window.
I’ll bet he had to launder the ol’ scrubs that night...
That was the scariest twilight zone I ever saw as a kid. Even watching it as an adult gives me the willies.....not as much as seeing Hillary on t.v. but pretty much..... Excellent episode!
What is this?
Ping!
(But I still say go for it!)
“Teddy’s too fat to be sucked out the window.”
And Bubba is used to suction-it wouldn’t faze him at all;)
That is the “beast” out on the wing.
Very,very,very lucky guy.
so was the window a Chinese import?
Yup, it was capn Kirk....the zone had a lot of soon to be stars....shatner, savalas, asner come immediately to mind.
hmmm.. I dunno,, but it’s pieces are currently a USA export landing somewhere in Canada (or maybe just Montana). :-)
The same thing, but even more harrowing and dramatic, happened to a Brititsh Air pilot in 1990 flying from London to Spain.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/This-is-your-captain-screaming/2005/02/04/1107476802601.html
National Geographic has a series called Air Crash Investigations which had an amazing re-enactment of the pilot, Tim Lancaster, being sucked out of the plane because the cockpit window had been replaced the day before with screws that were two-hundredth of an inch smaller in diameter than the original.
The National Geographic documentary was called Blow Out.
The pilot miraculously survived. His whole body was wind-strapped to the front of the plane - crew members were holding his feet. The crew thought he was dead, but the co-pilot told the crew to keep holding him for fear his body would get sucked into the engines possibly forcing the plane down.
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