Forest Service Plane Crash Survivor Amazed To Be Alive

Oct. 20, 2004
Matthew Ramige remembers walking away after the small plane that carried him into the Montana wilderness crashed and burned.

SEATTLE (AP) -- Matthew Ramige remembers walking away after the small plane that carried him into the Montana wilderness crashed and burned.

He looked down and saw his hands were badly burned, his shirt and pants burned and in tatters. His back was broken _ a compression fracture _ but he could walk.

``I couldn't believe what had happened. I was just glad that I survived and amazed that I had survived,'' Ramige, 30, told reporters Wednesday, one month after the Sept. 20 crash near Glacier National Park.

The single-engine plane, with five people aboard, had been ferrying Forest Service workers to conduct an annual vegetation inventory and repair telecommunication facilities.

When no rescuers arrived by the next morning, Ramige and fellow survivor Jodee Hogg began hiking out of Montana's rugged Great Bear-Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. Ground crews reached the burned wreckage later that day but found no signs of the survivors and believed all aboard had perished.

``It's like being given a second chance, and gaining a new perspective on life,'' Ramige said. ``I think anyone who has been close to death would say the same thing.

``There's no doubt I was lucky to survive,'' he added.

Walking stiffly, Ramige wore a back brace and treatment gloves Wednesday, five days after being released from Harborview Medical Center. He underwent two skin-graft surgeries for burns on his chest, right thigh and right hand during his 25-day hospital stay.

Ramige, of Jackson, Wyo., will travel to Montana and then to his mother's home in Albany, N.Y., to complete his recovery.

He remembers that Hogg, 23, of Billings, Mont., who suffered a sprained foot and back, helped him get out of the plane.

``My right boot was lodged on something, and her strength jostled me free and if it weren't for her I don't know if I could have gotten out of the plane by myself,'' he said.

She and passenger Ken Good, who also made it out of the plane, made a ``Matt sandwich,'' holding him to protect him during the first snowy, windy night. Good was a big man and his body provided heat for all of them, Ramige said, but by the next morning Good was dead.

Ramige took the dead man's flight jacket. He and Hogg decided to hike out.

``I felt like Jodee and I had to take action rather than wait for uncertain rescue,'' he said. ``We knew which way we needed to hike out, so we took action and made it happen.''

It wasn't easy going for Ramige, in pain from his burns and his fractured back. He had to lie on his stomach to drink water from streams, then somehow get back up.

He remembers Hogg kept him going when he wanted to stop and rest. ``I don't know if I could have done it by myself,'' he said. The two huddled together for warmth and got some sleep the second night.

``The first real recognition that we were going to make it was when we heard a train _ there's Amtrak that goes through there along Highway 2 _ and we knew basically where we were and that it was only a few miles to go,'' he said.

``Then we made it to the road and it was official that we were going to be all right.''

They traveled perhaps three to five miles _ but with the rough terrain and their injuries, it took them 29 hours.

After they flagged down motorists, Ramige was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Kalispell and then transferred to Harborview in Seattle, the region's burn center. Hogg was treated at a hospital in Kalispell.

Hogg told reporters Oct. 6 that she feared if she and Ramige didn't start hiking, neither would survive a second night in the wilderness.

``I had a feeling that it was absolutely unacceptable for me to sit down and quit,'' she said. ``I was perfectly capable of walking, and I had walked a lot farther than that in my life before.''

Ramige has spoken with investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board and the U.S. Forest Service. The NTSB report on what caused the crash will take six months to complete, a spokeswoman in Seattle said.

Contract pilot Jim Long, 60, of Kalispell, Mont., and Forest Service employee Davita Bryant, 32, of Whitefish, Mont., died in the fire that resulted from the crash, the Flathead County, Mont., sheriff has said. Good, 58, also a Forest Service employee from Whitefish, died from burns, injuries and shock.

Ramige doesn't know if he will return to his job with the Forest Service; he does know he won't fly in another small plane.

And he's still thinking about how the experience has changed him.

``Just watching my family and friends show so much support and love ... it makes me want to reach out to other people in my life and give back,'' he said. ``I know I'll never be the same after living through something like this.''

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