Family Plane Trip: Dodging Weather and Mountains

In May 2012, Brian Brown is flying his small, single-engine private plane from his home in California over to Idaho, to visit his eldest daughter. It should be a simple journey of just a few hours. But when the aircraft is assailed by terrible weather over the Owyhee Mountains all his plans are thrown out of the window. Worse still, Brian isn’t alone. The moment will come when this pilot, husband and father is all out of options… A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. Written by Heléna Lewis | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound design by Matt Peaty | Assembly edit by RJ Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Ralph Tittley. For more on this story read Brian’s book Rescued: One Family’s Miraculous Story of Survival. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:02John Hopkins?

  It's just after 9:00 PM, Saturday, the 26th of May, 2012.

• 1:07John Hopkins?

  In northwest America, the snow-sputtered expanse of the Ojaihee Mountain Range looms over the desert terrain of southern Idaho. Rugged, 8,000-foot peaks are interspersed by a labyrinth of gorges and canyons. Some so remote and inaccessible that only a handful of people have ever set foot in them. It's a beautiful, formidable landscape, and one prone to dramatic weather patterns.

• 1:36John Hopkins?

  Within the craggy embrace of the mountains, storm clouds now gather like predators, smothering the sky in a thick gray pall.

• 1:45John Hopkins?

  And there, navigating the narrow ribbon of air between the mountains and the clouds is a small, white-and-yellow airplane.

• 1:57John Hopkins?

  Inside, 47-year-old pilot Brian Brown grips the controls. His face is a taut mask of concentration, his eyes darting left and right as he tries to guide the little plane through the storm.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  I could see towering cumulus forming in front of me, which is basically like thunderheads, pretty much right in our path. Once I had one form in front of me and I turned, next thing I knew, I had another one right in front of me, and I was just kind of dodging weather and mountains at that point.

• 2:29John Hopkins?

  For Brian alone, this situation would be worrying enough. But today, it isn't just his own safety he's responsible for. His family are in the plane with him.

• 2:40John Hopkins?

  In the passenger seat, his wife, Jayanne, begins to pray, her voice crackling over the headset.

• 2:47John Hopkins?

  In the back of the plane, the couple's adult daughter, Heather, cries out in fear as fierce turbulence causes the aircraft to jolt and judder.

• 2:57John Hopkins?

  Rigid with tension, Brian glances at his GPS. They're almost out of the mountains now. If they can make it over the next couple of ridge lines, the weather should ease off a bit.

• 3:09John Hopkins?

  But then, out of nowhere, something horrifying happens.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  Was scanning the instruments, and I watched my airspeed go from 110, and it dropped down to 40 in the snap of a finger. The plane needs at least about 55 miles an hour to fly.

• 3:26John Hopkins?

  The engine is stalling.

• 3:30John Hopkins?

  The warning system blares as the aircraft begins dropping out of the sky, plummeting helplessly towards earth. His ingrained training takes over, and Brian pitches the plane's nose down, hoping to increase airspeed and regain control. The ground races up towards him, trees and rocks growing larger at a dizzying rate. At the last moment, Brian yanks the plane back up, pulling hard on the controls. Pushed to its maximum, the engine squeals as the aircraft begins to climb.

• 4:02John Hopkins?

  But it's not enough. The little plane has neither the power nor the altitude to recover from the stall.

• 4:09John Hopkins?

  With a mountain face before them, and just seconds until impact, Brian does the only thing he can do.

• 4:16Speaker 03

  And I actually told Jayanne and Heather I was sorry, that I didn't think we were gonna make it. And I told them I loved them.

• 4:32John Hopkins?

  Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations, people suddenly forced to fight for their lives.

• 4:52John Hopkins?

  In this episode, we meet professional firefighter and licensed pilot, Brian Brown. In May, 2012, Brian, his wife Jayanne, and their daughter Heather decide to visit Heather's older sister in Idaho. From sunny California, it's a journey of over 600 miles by car, but should only take a matter of hours in Brian's private plane. However, when the family is hit by unexpectedly bad weather, all their carefully-laid plans are thrown out of the window.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  I'd looked behind me to turn around and go back, and the weather had completely closed in around us, so there was no turning back anymore.

• 5:30John Hopkins?

  Faced with an awful situation as a pilot, husband, and father, Brian will employ all his skills and training to try to keep his family from harm. But there's only so much he can do, and as the plane goes down, it seems certain their fate is sealed.

• 5:45Speaker 03

  We hit two trees with the wingtips and then hit belly-first into the next mountainside, and that's when, pretty much, our world went black.

• 5:53John Hopkins?

  I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.

• 6:20John Hopkins?

  It's morning, Saturday, the 26th of May, 2012. In north-central California, the sun pulses against a clear blue sky.

• 6:31John Hopkins?

  At a small airport just south of Sacramento, a Cessna 172 Skyhawk idles on the tarmac, its white-and-yellow paintwork gleaming in the sunlight. Powered by a single engine, the little four-seater aircraft is among the most popular of small planes ever built, thanks to its impressive safety record and reliability.

• 6:52John Hopkins?

  Inside, 47-year-old Brian Brown runs through the pre-flight checklist, with his wife Jayanne beside him, and their daughter Heather, in her mid-20s, curled up on the backseat.

• 7:04John Hopkins?

  Having already been delayed once this morning by the plane's flat battery, Brian is keen to get underway. Today's trip has been months in the making, and is something he's looking forward to. The plan is simple enough. Brian, Jayanne, and Heather will fly from California to the small city of mountain home Idaho, where Heather's older sister, Tabitha, lives. For her birthday, the family had bought Tabitha tickets to her favorite musical, which is showing at a theater in Sacramento. So, after a brief stay in Idaho, Brian will return home in the plane alone whilst Jayanne and their two daughters make the long drive back to California together.

• 7:43Speaker 03

  Was an opportunity for the girls to have a road trip and Tabitha to not have to drive by herself from Idaho to California, you know, provide a little safety and some company.

• 7:53John Hopkins?

  All being well, today's flight should only take about four hours, and Brian has been meticulous in his planning.

• 8:00Speaker 03

  I actually was checking weather trends over a period of time, how the weather was changing through, especially the mountain ranges, because there's a couple of them between California and Idaho. Usually, you'll see a common trend of how the winds are moving and that sort of thing. So, I mean, I'd watched that actually for, I'd say even a month before our flight had taken place. I did the normal pre-flight checks as far as weather and weight and balance and all that sort of stuff for performance for the aircraft, and had in good plan of how to accommodate for things as we went along in that flight.

• 8:40John Hopkins?

  With three people onboard, the small aircraft is already up against its weight limits, so the family have packed only the bare minimum of clothing and supplies.

• 8:49John Hopkins?

  But even with the best of planning, their progress will still be dictated by the weather.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  It was a clear blue sky, and the one big difference was, before we left, I did know that there was a storm out there. It was right around the Ojaihee Mountains in Idaho, and at the rate it was moving, I felt pretty comfortable that by the time we got there, that that storm was going to be pushed off towards the east and be gone. And not only would it be gone, it would actually help us be pulled across from the west to the east, so it would actually make our travel time a little bit faster, you know, give us a nice tailwind.

• 9:30John Hopkins?

  Despite his eagerness to get underway and see Tabitha, Brian is not one for taking risks, especially where his family are concerned. He and Jayanne have been together since they were teenagers, and have essentially grown up side by side.

• 9:45Speaker 03

  My wife and I are high school sweethearts. We met in band. Actually, I played an instrument, and we'd been together ever since.

• 9:54John Hopkins?

  Soon after getting married, the couple started a family. Then, in his early twenties, Brian took an opportunity to join the local fire service as a volunteer, a role which had long interested him.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  My very first alarm was a grass fire. And so, you know, holding on to the back of the fire rig, you know, getting there, code three lights and sirens, all that sort of stuff, my heart was just about pounding out of my chest. But we get there, and, you know, I hop off, grab a hose, and I'm putting out fire. And I was hooked. That was the turning point. It just really, really excited me and hooked me into it, and so I just dove all in and focused all my schooling towards that at that point.

• 10:34John Hopkins?

  Soon, Brian shifted from volunteer to paid professional. Over the years, he rose through the ranks to become captain of one department and deputy chief of another.

• 10:45John Hopkins?

  Throughout his career, Brian has responded to all sorts of emergencies, and has developed an ability to keep his head in the most stressful of situations.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  My supervisor, he had said he could always tell how bad an incident was that I was on, because if it was really, really bad, I actually was more and more calm. The more calm my voice got, the more serious he knew the incident that I was on was.

• 11:11John Hopkins?

  Alongside his career as a firefighter, Brian also continued his training as a private pilot, a passion which began in his teenage years.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  I started when I was 16 years old, flying, and then kind of flew off and on. Getting a pilot's license is very expensive, and I was funding it myself as a 16-year-old. So I was working, you know, odd jobs to try and pay for my flying, and it kind of made me start and stop quite a bit. Very common, I think, in the pilot world for that to happen.

• 11:42John Hopkins?

  Flying became a much-needed release from the pressures of a stressful, adrenaline-fueled career.

• 11:49John Hopkins?

  In 2002, he finally became a certified pilot, and whenever he could, he rented a plane and headed into the skies. Renting, however, was expensive and inconvenient. So a few years later, Jayanne provided him with a perfect and very generous solution.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  My wife, on my 40th birthday, actually surprised me with an airplane. She was a dental hygienist, and while she was picking and cleaning people's teeth, she was asking questions of her pilot patients about aircraft and what would be a good one for her to purchase for me. And so, yeah, on my 40th birthday, she bought me an airplane.

• 12:34Speaker 00

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• 13:36John Hopkins?

  It's about 40 minutes after takeoff, somewhere over the Sierra Nevada mountain range in eastern California. The flight has been smooth so far, but the change of terrain has brought a shift in the weather.

• 13:49John Hopkins?

  Large clouds loom over jagged peaks, turning the world gray as turbulence begins to batter the small plane. The aircraft lurches and bounces, sometimes dropping several hundred feet in mere seconds. The sensation is unpleasant, but to be expected over the mountains. And besides, it isn't anything Brian hasn't encountered before. Still, it's a welcome relief for everyone when they make a planned stop at the small city of Susanville, nestled in a valley near the California-Nevada border. But what is intended to be a 20-minute refueling break quickly turns into something else.

• 14:27Speaker 03

  The weather had gotten bad enough that we actually stayed there. There's always a beat-up old car that a pilot has left behind to let other pilots use. And so, we took that and drove it into town, and we got breakfast. And I just figured, well, we'll just wait for this weather to move on. Thus, what it's showing is it's supposed to move to the east, and so we waited that out.

• 14:52John Hopkins?

  The delay is frustrating, but unavoidable.

• 14:56John Hopkins?

  Around 2:00 PM, conditions eventually clear enough for the family to take off again.

• 15:03John Hopkins?

  The last remnants of civilization quickly vanish below them, replaced instead by remote, rugged swathes of wilderness. Time passes easily. In the passenger seat, Jayanne works quietly on a sewing project, whilst in the back, Heather listens to music on her phone. If progress continues like this, they should reach Idaho in time for dinner with Tabitha, despite the delays they've experienced so far.

• 15:29John Hopkins?

  However, as the plane continues its trajectory northeast towards the backbone of the Oaihi Mountains, the weather changes again.

• 15:37Speaker 03

  Right about the time I was getting up to the Oaihi Mountains, I could actually see that storm front still there. And, you know, I was a little disturbed by it, but it wasn't producing any rain at the time. So I went ahead and I thought, well, just go ahead and proceed on. We're pretty close. I mean, we were probably about 30 to 40 minutes from being at our destination at that point. About five minutes into that flight past the weather front, the rain had started. And it was raining so hard, I actually couldn't see through the windshield.

• 16:16John Hopkins?

  Once more assaulted by turbulence, and now virtually flying blind, Brian has no choice but to try to land fast.

• 16:25John Hopkins?

  He turns the plane away from the mountains and programs his GPS to direct him to the nearest airport, a place bearing the incongruous name of Rome, Oregon.

• 16:36John Hopkins?

  A few minutes later, Brian squints down through the sheeting rain and gets his first glimpse of their safe haven.

• 16:44Speaker 03

  I looked down, and I'm thinking, you've got to be kidding me. Rome was like an old, abandoned World War II gravel strip out in the middle of literally nowhere. There were no buildings. I went ahead and landed there, because, you know, at that point, it was best to be on the ground. I kind of joke about it now. The only facilities that were there was some tie-downs to tie the aircraft down and a sign that said, "Welcome to Rome, Oregon." That was it.

• 17:15John Hopkins?

  There is no shelter, no bathroom, and nowhere to refuel. But the family are at least on the ground. They huddle inside the cramped, chilly confines of the plane as the rain beats down mercilessly upon the windscreen. Dressed for Californian weather and with little in the way of extra clothing or supplies, it's hardly comfortable, but can't be helped.

• 17:37Speaker 03

  I remember Jayanne and Heather both saying, you know, what next? What do we do now? At that point, you know, I had really not anticipated that weather to be stalled like it was, where it was, for so long. But again, the girls asked, what are we going to do next? And I had said, well, we might end up spending the night here in the plane, which clearly was not what they were looking for.

• 18:04John Hopkins?

  Cell phone service is patchy, but the family are at least able to get through to Tabitha and let her know about the latest delay. It's a blow for everyone, and as time passes, it becomes increasingly clear that their chances of being reunited today are growing ever slimmer. It's too dangerous to fly over the mountains in the dark. So unless there is a definite break in the weather before evening, Brian, Jayanne, and Heather are going to be stuck in the plane overnight.

• 18:35John Hopkins?

  It's several hours later, and Brian's Cessna is still grounded. Inside, everyone is stiff and fatigued from the cold and confinement.

• 18:45John Hopkins?

  But in the last few minutes, it seems as if the rain is easing up and the sun has even begun peeking out from behind the clouds.

• 18:53Speaker 03

  It was kind of like you hear on the movies when the clouds open up, you hear the cherubs of, "Ohhhhh," you know? Everything's beautiful, and the sun's shining. There's a rainbow. I mean, everything's just gorgeous. So I got that view, and I went, okay. I looked over towards the Oaihi Mountains, and I could see them. And I saw the amount of time I had, and I can make this hot.

• 19:19John Hopkins?

  Confident that the storm has passed, Brian fires up the Cessna and takes off into the cloud-streaked skies.

• 19:27John Hopkins?

  With less than an hour to go until they reach their destination, they should have just enough daylight to make it over the mountains before dark.

• 19:35John Hopkins?

  With renewed energy, Brian heads towards the rocky outline of the Oaihis, girding himself for the final stretch of the journey. Soon, the snow-dusted slopes are sprawling out below him, and for a while, progress seems to be going smoothly. But then, in the blink of an eye, everything changes.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  As fast as that weather cleared, it came back with a vengeance. And I had gotten over a couple of ridge lines, and I could see towering cumulus forming in front of me, which is basically like thunderheads, pretty much right in our path. What that ended up doing was I was veering off what my normal path was gonna be, and I was just kinda flying to avoid weather, because once I had one form in front of me and I turned, next thing I knew, I had another one right in front of me, and I was just kinda dodging weather and mountains at that point.

• 20:28John Hopkins?

  Brian weaves left, then right, aiming for the clear patches of sky between the massive gray clouds. The plane wobbles and judders with the turbulence, and it takes all his concentration to keep it steady.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  I was constantly looking for the terrain, looking for the weather, and looking at the wings to make sure I wasn't getting any icing on the wings, because again, the temperatures had dropped considerably. It had gotten to a point where I went, you know what? I need to just turn back to Rome.

• 20:56John Hopkins?

  Brian turns to look behind, scanning the skies for a route back to the gravel landing strip. What he sees makes his heart sink.

• 21:05Speaker 03

  The weather had completely closed in around us. There was no turning back anymore. I had to just kinda continue with the ugly choice that I had made of pressing on.

• 21:16John Hopkins?

  There is nowhere to land in this rugged terrain, and now, unable to turn around, pushing on is his only option. Trying to stay in the narrow band between the low clouds and the tips of the mountains, Brian guides his plane forwards, his brow furrowed in anxious concentration. Beside him, Jayanne begins to pray.

• 21:38John Hopkins?

  A few stomach-jurning minutes later, the GPS shows they're almost clear of the mountains. With any luck, conditions should improve soon. But then disaster strikes.

• 21:50Speaker 03

  Crossing the ridge line, I was scanning the instruments, and I watched my airspeed go from 110 and it dropped down to 40 in the snap of a finger. And the plane needs at least about 55 miles an hour to fly.

• 22:05John Hopkins?

  Brian pitches the plane's nose down, desperately attempting to regain airspeed as the engine stalls.

• 22:13John Hopkins?

  Just before they hit the ground, he feels the controls start to respond again and pulls the aircraft back up hard. But the little plane doesn't have enough power to recover.

• 22:23Speaker 03

  I actually told Jayanne and Heather I was sorry that I didn't think we were gonna make it, and I told them I loved them.

• 22:30John Hopkins?

  The mountainside races towards them, and there is a sickening sound as the plane's wingtips are sheared off. A second later, it's all over.

• 22:40Speaker 03

  We hit two trees with the wingtips and then hit belly-first into the next mountainside. And that's when, pretty much, our world went black.

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• 24:18Speaker 00

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• 24:49John Hopkins?

  It's late evening on the 26th of May, 2012.

• 24:54John Hopkins?

  In the heart of the Oaihi Mountains, a small plane lies in a crumpled heap upon a steep, rocky slope, its windscreen shattered.

• 25:03John Hopkins?

  In the pilot's seat, Brian Brown is slumped unconscious over the controls, blood oozing from a large gash across his forehead.

• 25:12John Hopkins?

  Suddenly, a gut-piercing sound wrenches him back to life. His daughter Heather is screaming.

• 25:19John Hopkins?

  Groggy and dazed, Brian turns in his seat. His eyes instantly fall upon his wife Jayanne, and his stomach twists in shock.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  The door had ripped off on her side. She was just basically hanging out of the airplane like a rag doll with the seatbelt holding her in. And Heather was screaming and holding on to her too, you know, calling for her mom. I had actually immediately, I thought I had killed Jayanne on the impact, because her eyes were rolled into the back of her head. She had deep, snoring respirations, which is a sign of a pretty significant head injury. And at that point, you know, I just kinda snapped into gear.

• 26:03John Hopkins?

  Without pausing to consider his own injuries, Brian harnesses his decades of training and experience as a firefighter. If he doesn't act quickly, his wife could die in front of his eyes. With blood pouring down his face, he scrambles to reposition Jayanne's head and open her airway. He calls her name, trying to bring her back to consciousness.

• 26:24Speaker 03

  What seemed like an eternity was probably only a couple of seconds, but it sure seemed like an eternity. Her eyes kinda fluttered, and she took a big, deep breath and, "Praise God," she said, "I'm still with you. I'm okay." She was still with us, but she was really far from okay. She did have a pretty significant head injury.

• 26:51John Hopkins?

  It transpires that Heather, though badly shaken, is the only member of the family who didn't hit her head during the crash. Brian, like his wife, has not been so lucky.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  My plane only had lap restraints, just a lap seatbelt, not the shoulder harnesses. It's just an older aircraft. And because of that, I went through the windshield, at least my head did. And so I had a pretty decent laceration or head wound. It kinda looked like I got scalped. It started from about the middle of my forehead and went pretty much all the way to the back of the top part of my head, where I had a big flap of skin that had been cut open.

• 27:31John Hopkins?

  Though Brian is not yet aware of the full extent of his injuries, he has also broken his nose, his right arm, a few ribs, and sustained major lacerations across his body. However, right now, his priority is ensuring the safety of Jayanne and their daughter.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  I was so focused on just being a rescuer that I guess I didn't care? Or it just didn't sink in that I was hurt? I was so focused on, you know, taking care of her, taking care of Heather, that, I mean, my brain instantly cycled of step one, step two, step three, step four, of, you know, what needed to happen and the priorities that they needed to happen in. I went through all the priorities of what I was supposed to do as a rescuer on how to get our situation better.

• 28:23John Hopkins?

  Number one is checking whether it's safe to remain in the plane. Gingerly, Brian climbs out of the aircraft and starts circling its wrecked carcass.

• 28:34John Hopkins?

  They have crashed belly-first on the slope of a sagebrush-covered canyon.

• 28:39John Hopkins?

  Though the plane's wingtips have been torn off, its body remains surprisingly intact, and there don't appear to be any immediate fire hazards.

• 28:47John Hopkins?

  In another stroke of twisted good fortune, the impact was so hard that the aircraft is now firmly embedded in the ground with no chance of slipping further down the slope.

• 28:57John Hopkins?

  Having established the plane is safe to remain inside, Brian turns his attention to the next priority: trying to get help. He checks that the plane's emergency beacon has activated, and, searching through the debris of possessions strewn across the floor of the plane, he manages to retrieve his portable radio.

• 29:17John Hopkins?

  Tuning it to the right frequency, he focuses on sending out a mayday. But that isn't something he can do here.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  I made a very unpopular decision with the girls, and I said, "You know what? I need to hike up the mountain ways and try and transmit a mayday." Because the event of that aircraft stall and hitting the ground was so fast, I didn't even have a chance to transmit a mayday out before we went down. Like I said, it wasn't a popular decision, because you can imagine, with my head injuries, I had blood just dripping off of me.

• 29:55John Hopkins?

  Despite the protests of his family, Brian assures them that this is the best course of action.

• 30:01John Hopkins?

  He begins climbing up the mountainside, loose shale and snow crunching beneath his feet.

• 30:07John Hopkins?

  He struggles upwards in the fading light, leaving a trail of crimson blood in his wake.

• 30:13John Hopkins?

  About 200 yards up the slope, he stops and tries his radio, clinging to the faint hope that it might pick up some sort of signal despite their remote location.

• 30:23John Hopkins?

  But the only response he receives is silence. For now, it seems, they're on their own.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  And then, at that point, our situation got worse. You wouldn't imagine it could, but it started to snow. So, my next priority at that point was, "Well, I need to light a fire." It'll be twofold: it'll be a good signal fire, and it'll help keep us warm for however long it takes for us to get rescued.

• 30:51John Hopkins?

  In the frigid twilight, Brian descends back down the mountain, breaking off tree branches as he goes. Though the plane should provide them with a modicum of shelter, it now has no lights and no heater. With a long, freezing night ahead of them, a good fire could make the difference between life and death. A little way away from the plane, Brian stacks the wood into a pile, then retrieves some scraps of paper from the aircraft and adds them to the heap.

• 31:19John Hopkins?

  However, it's obvious that the branches are damp and won't catch easily. Driven by desperation, Brian drains some of the fuel from the plane, and, in the near darkness, he splashes it around the small pile. Then he bends down and touches his lighter to the paper.

• 31:40Speaker 03

  This is a very embarrassing thing to admit, especially as a professional firefighter. But when I reached down and lit that fire, I had accidentally dumped fuel all over my arm, and aircraft fuel is pretty volatile.

• 31:56John Hopkins?

  There is a massive flash as the fuel on Brian's arm catches. Tongues of flame burst into life, and a blast of heat engulfs him. Instantly, Brian drops to the ground and rolls his arm in the snow, rushing to smother the fire.

• 32:12John Hopkins?

  Luckily, the damage turns out to be minimal, and he escapes with nothing worse than some singed hairs.

• 32:19John Hopkins?

  Despite that, the shock is enough to make him reconsider his next actions.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  Along with being mad and embarrassed and all that, I looked back over at the airplane, and I could see Heather looking through the window, and her eyes were almost as big as the windshield at that point. It had terrified her. She just watched her dad basically flame on into a torch, and I had decided that we needed to settle. I needed to settle and slow down just a little bit more. So I found the door to the airplane that had come off on Jay Anne's side, and I fastened the door back on and decided that we'd just shelter in place for a few hours, or at least until morning.

• 32:59John Hopkins?

  With night now here, Brian and his family simply have to hunker down and wait.

• 33:06John Hopkins?

  When they fail to show up in Idaho, Tabitha will, at some point, activate a search party. But there's no telling how long exactly it will be before she does.

• 33:15John Hopkins?

  And besides, trapped in the heart of the mountain and enveloped in snow and darkness, rescuers will likely struggle to find them.

• 33:24John Hopkins?

  With nothing else for it, Brian, Jay Anne, and Heather huddle inside the plane, the cold already beginning to steal into their bones.

• 33:33John Hopkins?

  From the backseat, Heather pushes forward a blanket to try to keep her parents warm.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  Even when she was a little girl, every time we went traveling somewhere, she'd always keep a blanket and a pillow. And because we were hurt so bad, she forfeited the blanket to Jay Anne and I to cover ourselves up. Even as much as I argued, she said, "No, you guys are hurt too bad, please." And so, we took the blanket, and she took the pillow apart and put the pillowcase over her legs, and then just kind of hugged the pillow.

• 34:10John Hopkins?

  But despite Heather's sacrifice, the family's scant supplies are no match for the mountain cold.

• 34:16John Hopkins?

  Freezing air and snowflakes blow through the smashed windscreen, and as the temperature plummets, it isn't long before everyone is shivering uncontrollably. Furthermore, the true severity of Jay Anne's head injury is starting to become apparent. Though Heather and Brian do their best to keep her awake, she is far from alert and spends much of her time mumbling prayers and drifting in and out.

• 34:40Speaker 03

  I was concerned about two things in general for the evening. One was hypothermia, because it was just getting really, really cold really fast, and I thought, "We're dressed like Californians, hot and sunny, and we're not prepared for this." That was the one concern, and then the other was, both Jay Anne and I had very significant head injuries. Those two things on top of each other, in my training, it was like, if either one of us goes to sleep, we may not wake back up. And so, I told Heather, "You need to do a roll call with us about every 10 or 15 minutes. So, call our names, and don't accept a grunt. I need you to actually have us respond back to you. We can't fall asleep."

• 35:27John Hopkins?

  Brian and his family shiver inside the wreckage of their plane, the silence broken only by Heather calling out to her parents at regular intervals as she tries to keep them awake. The darkness outside is impenetrable, the mood bleak. Every time Brian shifts a little in the seat, blood seeps from the large laceration on his head.

• 35:49John Hopkins?

  Midnight comes and goes, and the family slowly starts succumbing to the cold.

• 35:56John Hopkins?

  And then, out of nowhere, something surreal happens.

• 36:02John Hopkins?

  Neon light suddenly floods the cockpit, accompanied by the most unexpected sound.

• 36:09Speaker 03

  The cellphone rang, and it startled us all. First off, we didn't even realize we had the phones anymore, because the phones went flying throughout the wreckage. And we were in an area where cellphone service was poor at best, and actually, really, where we were at that point, it should not have been working at all. And this will make you laugh: the actual ringtone was Dancing Queen from ABBA, because that was Tabitha's assigned ringtone to Jay Anne's phone. And the phone lit up the cockpit, of course, and I'll tell you, it was like sticking your finger in a light socket.

• 36:46John Hopkins?

  Of all the things, the sound of ABBA has brought the family back from the brink. And if the phone has signal, they can put out an SOS.

• 36:55John Hopkins?

  Heather scrambles to locate the device, her numb hands fumbling through the debris on the plane floor, guided by the light of the screen.

• 37:03John Hopkins?

  But by the time she's found it, the call has gone to voicemail.

• 37:07John Hopkins?

  In the chaos, she has also found her father's phone, but though fully charged, it has no signal. There is, however, a shard of hope. A tiny, intermittent bar of signal flickers weakly on Jay Anne's screen. She has almost no battery left, but it might just be enough to save them.

• 37:26Speaker 03

  Both Jay Anne and I, you know, we'll call Tabitha back and have her call 911. And Heather just kind of looked at us, and she said, "You know what? The heck with that, I'm calling 911 myself."

• 37:37John Hopkins?

  Heather begins waving both phones around the cockpit, repeatedly dialing 911 as she tries to get one of them to connect. Finally, a call on Jay Anne's phone goes through.

• 37:48Speaker 03

  I could have swore it was an angel, because alls I heard was, you know, "Hawaii County, 911, what's your emergency?" And I was just like, "Oh, praise God, somebody knows we're out here."

• 38:00John Hopkins?

  With help from her dad, Heather begins to give the dispatcher the essential information. The line is bad, the call dropping in and out with frustrating frequency.

• 38:11John Hopkins?

  Heather has just enough time to give the dispatcher a quick rundown of their situation and a rough location before the signal drops completely.

• 38:19Speaker 03

  There was a glimmer of hope in that. We knew people knew we were out there, we knew people were looking. Heather did say they needed to launch a helicopter, because we were deep in the mountains, because they were going to just send people in cars and on foot, and it was like, "No, that's not going to work."

• 38:39John Hopkins?

  The plane is once again plunged into darkness and silence. Heather resumes her roll call and the family strain their eyes and ears for any indication that rescue might be approaching.

• 38:52John Hopkins?

  And then, hours later, sometime in the early morning, they hear the distant but unmistakable sound of a helicopter.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  I was thinking, you know, great, they're close. I couldn't see them, but I could hear them. And it had come to me that I thought, hey, I've got my portable aviation radio, I can talk to them. I had stowed the radio down by my feet on the floorboard of the airplane so I wouldn't lose it. And when I reached down to get it and turned it on, the cold weather killed the batteries. So the one thing that I had that I thought would work was immediately kind of stripped away from me.

• 39:32John Hopkins?

  Unable to contact the people searching for them, the family are instead forced to sit and listen. The sound of rotor blades grows louder, then fainter again as their helicopters comb the mountainside for them.

• 39:45Speaker 03

  That happened for probably about two more hours and then the helicopter stopped.

• 39:52Speaker 03

  And I thought, shoot, you know, they've either given up looking for us or they're just looking somewhere else. They can't find us where we're at anymore.

• 40:10Speaker 06

  From the creators of Zootopia and Frozen comes Disney's Hext. Welcome to Hext and enter the world of witches, where it was foretold that an ordinary girl would become an extraordinary witch and save the world of magic. Disney's Hext arrives in theaters this Thanksgiving.

• 40:29Speaker 00

  Host Thanksgiving with industry-leading quality standards from Whole Foods Market. There are no antibiotics in their meat department, ever, so carve up turkey and spiral cut ham with peace of mind. Shop organic sides like stuffing mix and cranberry sauce from 365 brand. And guess what? All their delectable pies are made with no high fructose corn syrup. Gourmet Thanksgiving flavors with the quality you want, only at Whole Foods Market.

• 41:01John Hopkins?

  Given the difficult terrain and conditions, it's possible search and rescue won't be able to locate them for several more hours, maybe even days. Gray, pre-dawn light begins filtering into the sky.

• 41:14John Hopkins?

  By this point, Brian's head wound has leaked so much blood that his eyes are practically crusted shut. They are all numb with cold and fatigue, exhausted from their ordeal, but still just about alive.

• 41:28John Hopkins?

  Eventually, the noise of a helicopter returns, first distant, then growing louder.

• 41:35John Hopkins?

  With just enough light to see, Brian can now take action to help the aircraft find them.

• 41:41Speaker 03

  I thought, okay, I'm gonna go out and light that signal fire because I want them to be able to home in on us a little bit better. So I got out of the airplane and I had reached down to light the signal fire and as soon as I did that, the helicopter flew right over the top of us.

• 42:00John Hopkins?

  Brian scrambles in his pocket for his phone, grabbing it just as the helicopter passes over him without stopping.

• 42:07John Hopkins?

  It hasn't seen them.

• 42:09John Hopkins?

  With no time to lose, he runs after it, screaming at the top of his lungs and repeatedly hitting the flash on his phone's camera. The chopper disappears and his hopes sink. Still, he runs back to the pile of fuel-soaked wood and manages to light it. He also opens an app on his phone that emits a mini strobe light. And as he does so, the helicopter reappears above him and hovers overhead. This time, there's no doubt. They've seen him.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  When the helicopter went into a hover, it quite literally dropped me to my knees because I, man, I knew we were rescued at that point. It was just gonna be a matter of time for them to get to us and get us out of there. And yeah, I was just absolutely beyond elated.

• 43:01John Hopkins?

  The helicopter disappears in search of somewhere to land, and Brian stumbles back to the plane to deliver the good news to Jayann and Heather. It isn't long before a crew of SAR personnel are able to hike down to the plane. Relieved and amazed to discover that all three victims of the crash are still alive, they instantly begin a rescue operation.

• 43:21Speaker 03

  They truly thought they were doing body recoveries. What I learned over a period of time is that segment of the Oaihe Mountains has taken a lot of lives, mostly due to inclement weather, hypothermia and things of that nature. And just the amount of time that we were there overnight in that storm, they truly thought they were just gonna be recovering bodies.

• 43:42John Hopkins?

  Finally, Brian can take a step back and let himself and his wife and daughter be cared for by others. With the responsibility lifted from his shoulders, he's overwhelmed by a wave of sensations and emotions.

• 43:56Speaker 03

  I all of a sudden was just hit with an incredible amount of pain. I used to do this when I was a professional firm and I'd come home from fires and rescues. I'd get home and I'd take my shirt off and I'd have cuts and bruises and stuff all over me and Jayann, you know, what in the world happened to you yesterday? And, you know, I'd tell her and so I didn't even realize I was hurt. I think, you know, the adrenaline takes over at that point and I'm just so focused on rescuing. The same thing apparently happened in this crash.

• 44:28John Hopkins?

  Over the next few hours, the whole family is airlifted off the mountain and taken to a nearby hospital where Tabitha is waiting for them.

• 44:36John Hopkins?

  All of them are cut up and bruised, but none need surgery. They go on to make full recoveries, though the emotional trauma of the accident is harder to shake.

• 44:49Speaker 03

  None of us really have any long-term injuries from the incident with the exception of a little bit of stress. Sometimes some things will still trigger us. Definitely a helicopter flying overhead, as much as that was an excitement, it's still, it's a little bit of a trigger of reminding us where we were. And this accident was 14 years ago. I can tell you when we travel, both Tabitha and Heather, it's mandatory that we do the follow the phone sort of thing so they can always check on where we're at and, you know, they always know we're okay. And I can't say as I blame them. We used to communicate really well before, but it definitely brought the family a lot closer too.

• 45:33John Hopkins?

  Brian still struggles with a sense of guilt over the crash. But his subsequent actions undoubtedly helped to save not only his own life, but also those of Jayann and Heather.

• 45:45Speaker 03

  I did a briefing with the Federal Aviation Administration, which is very common after an incident. It was just a couple of days out of the hospital, but I sat there and explained what had happened to us and what I had done, the decisions I had made that I felt like got us in that spot and then the decisions that I had made that helped keep us alive. They were really quite intrigued because over that weekend, there were three other plane crashes in that same region and we were the only survivors.

• 46:19Speaker 03

  I mean, I just was just completely blown away with how everything worked so much in our favor when things were so much not in our favor. My decisions put us in such a bad spot. I might have helped keep us alive with the gifts God gave me, but there was definitely much bigger thing going on there.

• 46:39John Hopkins?

  The resilience of his family was key, particularly Heather's clear thinking in tough moments. And so was the diligent and efficient work of the search and rescue team.

• 46:51John Hopkins?

  Just six months after the accident, Brian is back to flying, though the crash does forever change his attitude towards it.

• 46:59Speaker 03

  My nerves were a little bit on edge walking up to the plane, but once I started the whole pre-flight process and then once I literally started the motor of the aircraft, everything went right back to discipline again, you know? And so the stress went out the window and then it was just a matter of flying the airplane. So I do still fly, again, just a lot more cautious about what and where and how I fly than I used to be, just from some hard lessons learned.

• 47:28John Hopkins?

  Now in his 60s, Brian has retired from the fire service, but he isn't done trying to save people from danger yet. Determined that something good should come out of the crash in which he and his family almost died, he has started sharing his story with others in the hope that the lessons he learned may, one day, help to save someone else's life.

• 47:47Speaker 03

  I go around and I actually do speeches with pilots about our rescue so I can teach them what I would say what not to do, the decisions that I made that I felt like led us into that accident. So I talk about those sorts of things and then I also talk about the things that I did do to help us get rescued. It's motivated me in that aspect to want to keep this from happening to anybody else.

• 48:22John Hopkins?

  Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet a family caught in the center of one of the deadliest tornadoes ever to hit the United States. In May 2011, 30-year-old Danielle Stammer and her family are driving to see friends when the high-pitched wail of extreme weather sirens splits the air in their home city of Joplin, Missouri. This is not uncommon here in an area of central USA known as tornado alley.

• 48:47John Hopkins?

  Usually, twisters occur out of town, blowing themselves out over the fields without causing too much disruption. But not today.

• 48:55John Hopkins?

  As the tornado enters Joplin and begins its trail of devastation, Danielle and her family have moments to find shelter. It is a deadly EF5, the highest intensity categorization, indicating wind speeds of over 200 miles per hour. And Danielle is heading right into its path.

• 49:13Speaker 07

  The tornado was hitting in full force at that moment and I was thrown down. I fell forward and I thought, okay, so this is how my story ends.

• 49:27John Hopkins?

  That's next time on Real Survival Stories.

• 49:31John Hopkins?

  Listen right now without ads and without waiting a week by joining Noiser Plus.

• 49:37Speaker 06

  From the creators of Zootopia and Frozen comes Disney's Hext. Welcome to Hext and enter the world of witches, where it was foretold that an ordinary girl would become an extraordinary witch and save the world of magic. Disney's Hext arrives in theaters this Thanksgiving.

• 49:56Speaker 00

  Host Thanksgiving with industry-leading quality standards from Whole Foods Market. There are no antibiotics in their meat department, ever, so carve up turkey and spiral cut ham with peace of mind. Shop organic sides like stuffing mix and cranberry sauce from 365 brand. And guess what? All their delectable pies are made with no high fructose corn syrup. Gourmet Thanksgiving flavors with the quality you want, only at Whole Foods Market.