tor Ted Stevens was missing. Ron Duncan, the president of GCI, and his
pediatrician wife, Dani Bowman, headed out from the lodge to search in their plane along the Nushagak River. “Hey, Ron,” Bouker radioed, “I’ve already
fl own that route. Why don’t you sidestep south, I’ll sidestep north?” Meanwhile, on the mountainside, things went
silent in the downed plane at the fi rst thrum of a single engine overhead. “Oh, yeah, come on back,” someone begged. The sound faded. The hum of a second plane
came through the gray mass above. Then silence. A shout suddenly came through Duncan’s
radio: “I’ve got it!” Bouker said, confi rming the worst. Then: “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” Bouker wheeled quickly for a second pass to
catch the precise coordinates before the fl eeting window in the cloud bank slammed shut. A hand waved from the wreckage. Somebody’s alive down there, he reported
just after 8 p.m. As the cries of thanksgiving subsided within
the Otter, O’Keefe spoke up. He fi gured it would take the fat end of an hour to reach them. “Don’t expect to see anybody, like, now. It’s
going to take a bit of time for anybody to set down, forge their way through whatever terrain is out there.” “It’s pretty thick,” Willy said. Pretty thick, Bob Himschoot thought almost
a quarter-mile away up the mountainside as he stared into the dense underbrush. The plane he’d seen from the helicopter that dropped him here was invisible from the ground. Why the hell am I here? he wondered as rain
soaked through his jeans, T-shirt and hoodie. He was the wrong man for the job — trained to fi x satellite phone systems, not broken bodies — and he was scared out of his wits. I’m not the right person to get here fi rst, he
thought. It’s getting dark. But that’s the way of life in Alaska. They joke
in small towns that the volunteer fi re company is everybody. Like a lot of jokes, it’s not far off the mark. When the call came that a plane was missing, Himschoot hopped into Tom Tucker’s helicopter, and they set out to search. Now, as Tucker doubled back to get help, Himschoot was alone on the mountain. The forest of alders, gnarly trees with trunks
thick as rail posts, had been bent to grotesque submission by the wind that beats down in sum- mer and snow that piles on in winter. The big brown bears that live among them can sprint through the maze, navigating over sliding rocks and sloshing mud. It is a very different proposi-
TERRY SMITH
VICTIMS
THE
tion for a man in rubber boots. The bears, which grow to 1,500 pounds and 10 feet tall, don’t go looking for trouble, but crash-scene investiga- tors carry guns against the chance encounter. Hand over hand, from one tree to the next,
Himschoot plunged blindly down the slick hill- side, calling out. “Hello? Anybody out there?” “Where are you?” “Are you there?” The four survivors heard him stumbling to-
WILLIAM PHILLIPS SR.
ward them. “Yes, we’re here!” they hollered back. About six hours had passed since the crash
when Himschoot broke through to fi nd Willy standing by the plane’s open left door. Five dead, four alive, the boy reported. With nothing to offer, and fearful that his
weight might cause the plane to slide down the mountain, Himschoot stood beside the hull. He couldn’t see much from outside, but what he saw was a big jumbled mess. He asked Willy who had survived so he could address the three men trapped in the plane by name. “Get us out of here,” they pleaded. “Not quite yet,” Himschoot said. He could hear the pain in O’Keefe’s and
Morhard’s voices, but they couldn’t detail their injuries. Himschoot dialed 911 to fi nd out when help would arrive. “A doctor is on the way,” he told the survivors.
“Half an hour.” He held back this much of the truth: The
COREY TINDALL
fast-moving cloud banks were eating up the mountain. Even if the chopper with the doctor could get in, he fi gured the chances they would get out tonight were slim to none.
HIMSCHOOT CRAWLED BACK up the mountain, as Tucker — now carrying Bowman, the pediatrician — was struggling through the fog to fi nd a clearing to land again. Discovered but not yet saved, O’Keefe worked
DANA TINDALL
to keep everyone from drifting into a fatal sleep. Singing, joking, praying and, whenever all that ran dry, taking the injury roll call once again. “How’s everybody doing?” “What’s hurting you?” “Where does it hurt?” The responses were the same, but over time
the moans grew less frequent. “My leg really hurts.” “I think I broke a bunch of ribs.” “I think I busted my arm.” Kevin looked down and reported: “It looks
like someone took a spoonful of my knee out.” Morhard was fl oating in and out of con- sciousness, moaning when the pain got worse
NOVEMBER 28, 2010 | THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE 15
FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH OF PHILLIPS COURTESY OF THE (MONTGOMERY COUNTY) GAZETTE; SMITH, BY DON SCOTT/THE (CHRISTCHURCH,NEW ZEALAND) PRESS VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS;THE TINDALLS, FROM ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS
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