Into the Abyss - Snap Classic

A rookie pilot, a prominent politician, a cop, and a criminal find themselves enduring freezing temperatures in the remote wilderness after their plane crashes in Northern Canada. A huge thank you to Erik Vogel, the late Larry Shaben, and his daughter Carol Shaben http://www.carolshaben.com/ for sharing this story with Snap! There is so much more we are not able to share with you about Erik and Larry’s experience. To find out more about what transpired with Wapiti Flight 402, checkout Carol Shaben’s book, “Into the Abyss https://www.amazon.com/Into-Abyss-Extraordinary-True-Story/dp/1455501964,” from Grand Central Publishing https://www.grandcentralpublishing.com/. Special thanks to Nikka Singh for his help with this story. Produced by Bo Walsh, original score by Renzo Gorrio, artwork by Teo Ducot. Season 16 – Episode 16 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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

• 0:07Glynn Washington?

  Okay, okay, it's almost, almost gift giving time. And because gift giving time is cold outside time, it's wanna stay by a fire time. I like giving something cozy and nobody, but nobody does cozy like Quince. What's better than one for them and one for me? Or you? Like my Quince organic gauze dream quilt set paired with the brushed cotton sheet set that I got for me, that I got for them, for me? Put it together, you've got cozy squared. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com.

• 0:50Glynn Washington?

  Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Snap Judgment. It's the best way to support the show.

• 1:05Speaker 01

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• 1:42Glynn Washington?

  If you're lucky, very, very lucky, you get to grow up with siblings that you, for lack of a better word, you love. And growing up, I didn't say, "Hey, hey, knucklehead brothers, I love you."

• 2:05Glynn Washington?

  But in time, I've come to realize that I do, in fact, love them. More than love them. And there are lots of whores associated with trauma. I know this, but the gift of trauma at an early age is that it forges a type of sibling relationship that sometimes I don't see from families that had an easier go of it. I've witnessed brothers, grown men, who grew up together in the same home after a long time apart greet each other by shaking hands, by nodding hello. What?

• 2:49Glynn Washington?

  Those of us that emerged from trauma households, we greet each other with bear hugs, jumping on each other's backs, suplexes and atomic wedgies. Every touch, every smack upside the head, a reminder, a celebration that we made it through. And my brothers, they've both passed on too early, far, far too early. But if I get to see them again in the next life, one thing I can absolutely guarantee is that day, that day, there won't be no shaking hands, no polite nods, no wave.

• 3:32Glynn Washington?

  There will be joy. And for everyone that has been to the edge and looked over, today on Snap Judgment, we proudly present Into the Abyss. My name is Lynn Washington, and if you've never dipped your siblings' hands in hot sauce while they were sleeping, you should. You really should, when you're listening to Snap Judgment.

• 4:11Glynn Washington?

  We begin by taking you back to the year 1988. And some listeners should know that today's episode does involve a plane crash in which six lives were lost. In 1988, a young journalist based in Jerusalem, Carol Shaben, she comes across tragic news that's taken place 6,000 miles away, near her hometown in northern Canada. Stop judgment.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Wapiti got into big trouble back in October of 1984 when one of its planes crashed into a hill on approach to a tiny community north of Edmonton. Six people died, including Alberta NDP leader Grant Naughtley. Four others, including a cabinet minister, escaped without serious injury.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  It was October 19th, 1984, and I was working at a news agency in Jerusalem. And so on this particular morning, I was sitting at my desk and I was going through the Jerusalem Post. And I just remember flipping through and it was a headline that jumped out at me and that said, "Party Leader Killed in Alberta Plane Crash." And Alberta's my home province in Canada. And I zoned in on this article and I remember it so clearly. It was just a tiny block of text, less than 50 words.

• 5:40Speaker 03

  But it said, "Grant Naughtley, the leader of the new Democratic Party in Alberta and five other people, were killed in a crash of their twin-engine plane." And it went on to talk about one of the people on the plane, and his name was Larry Shaben, my father.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  I was staggered by this. And immediately, I dropped the paper and I called home. And I was frantic. I couldn't somehow believe that I didn't know what had happened. I didn't know if my dad was alive or dead. I didn't know anything. And I was feeling so far away. And my mom got on the phone and she just said to me, "He's OK. He's OK."

• 6:36Speaker 03

  The crash happened in October, and I couldn't get off work and get back to Canada until Christmas. And I remember seeing my dad and just not being able to put these two things together, this image in my head of this crash. And my dad, who seemed fine, I mean, he had been terribly beaten up. His face was mangled. There were all of these injuries. But none of that was visible to me when I got home. But I think, you know, something had changed. There was something subdued, something kind of profoundly sad, an air that hung around him that had never been there before.

• 7:22Speaker 03

  My dad was always larger than life. For me, he was just dad. But for everyone else, he was this respected politician. People called him the Honorable Larry Shaben. And I remember going to his favorite Chinese restaurant in Edmonton. And the owner would come out and greet him and say, "Governor, hello, governor. How are you?" And there would be this flurry of kind of attention and activity around him. And you could just get the sense that people were treating him in a very special way.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  He didn't really want to talk to me about what had happened. He'd kind of put it away in a, you know, like bearing something in a box and putting it under your bed. It was just a closed chapter of his life.

• 8:17Speaker 04

  One of those least injured was Harry Shaben, Alberta's housing minister. How are you feeling, sir?

• 8:22Speaker 05

  Just fine, thank you.

• 8:24Speaker 04

  Can you share a few thoughts with us?

• 8:25Speaker 05

  I'd prefer not to.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  It wasn't until 18 years later that I was able to talk to him about what had happened that night. So I remember taking him down to my office in the basement, and I had a tape recorder ready, and I said, "Okay, tell me about this." Okay, I wanted to ask you about what you remember from that night. What happened?

• 8:59Speaker 03

  He said to me, "You should look up Erik Vogel. You should look him up."

• 9:06Speaker 05

  You should talk to the pilot.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. I'm gonna try and track him, yeah.

• 9:14Speaker 05

  It's tough for him.

• 9:16Speaker 03

  I think he could feel that Eric was tortured by this. Immediately, I started looking for him. So I started looking for Vogels in the phone book and calling these numbers. And as I'd call, I'd say, "I'm the daughter of Larry Shaben, this crash survivor, and I'm looking for the pilot." And people would say, "Yeah, no, wrong number, wrong number, wrong number." And then I called this Vogel, and I did my spiel about how I was the daughter of one of the plane crash survivors, and I was looking for the pilot.

• 9:54Speaker 03

  It had been a woman who answered the phone.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  And there was this long silence, and I could feel in that silence that she did not want this question, this phone call, coming. I knew, before she'd even responded, that I had reached the right number. And it was Eric's wife, and she said, "He's on the road, but I could take your number." And I gave her my number, thinking, "This isn't gonna go any further. She does not want this past dredged up."

• 10:36Speaker 03

  It was evening when my phone rang and I answered the phone and this voice said, "It's Erik Vogel." And I remember just feeling this chill. He made it very clear to me that if you weren't Larry Shaben's daughter, I would not be sharing this story with you. And he just began to talk to me about this and I realized at that point, the deaths of six people were on his conscience every day.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  Like my dad, he had bottled this all up. I knew that he had a story that he had buried and he needed to unburden himself.

• 11:22Speaker 06

  I'm doing this as a favor to Carol, not to tell a really cool story because it's not, but for me, anyway. But it's just, I figure I owe Carol and I definitely owe her father, so.

• 11:37Speaker 06

  I started flying right out of high school and I had no real direction, didn't know what I wanted to do. And of course, my dad, being an airline pilot, was pushing me in that direction. And he got me enrolled in an aviation program. And it was that first summer that I was hooked and loved it and jumped into it.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  He was desperately trying to earn enough hours. This is the way you move up in the airlines because they have to get a certain number of hours before they can even apply to the major airlines.

• 12:03Speaker 06

  That was my goal. That was my incentive to do what I was told, to not get fired. And I tried too hard.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  Wapiti Airlines started this kind of milk run that would go from Edmonton to High Prairie, which is where we lived, and on to other small communities in the north. And so rather than my dad having to drive the four hours home, particularly in winter, he would take this flight.

• 12:32Speaker 03

  There were these scattered and remote communities, some of them accessible only by air. And these kinds of commuter airlines grew up with that tradition of, "We're going to push the weather and we're going to fight to get in, even when the weather might indicate that they shouldn't be flying."

• 12:53Speaker 05

  On this particular night, it was a snowy, overcast, really moist Vancouver kind of weather.

• 13:05Speaker 03

  The night of the crash, a lot of other major airlines had grounded their flights. But for Wapiti, they decided to go, to take this flight.

• 13:17Speaker 06

  I made a bit of an announcement in the terminal, saying, "Hey, the weather's really bad. There's a good chance we're not going to get into High Prairie. It's a very small town." I had three passengers go in there, and I hoped they didn't want to go, but they did. So that didn't give me a lot of options to cancel the flight. What was expected was to break the rules, was to get in no matter what. You fly overloaded, you fly below minimums, everything. And the morning pilot just said, "Be careful." You know, he had a hard time taking off that morning because of the snow, and so that was my big concern. And I knew the weather was bad, and I thought, "Okay, maybe it'll get better," but it turned out it got worse. You're supposed to have a copilot in certain situations with weather being bad.

• 13:59Speaker 06

  But when we got to Edmonton, the ticket girl there said, "They've bumped your copilot because they want to put a paying passenger on your flight." And I still, to this day, can't get over how stupid that was.

• 14:12Speaker 05

  I noticed that there was a guy, he wasn't in uniform, but he had somebody handcuffed to him. So we were going to have a prisoner and an RCMP. Of course, I was a little buzzed because having a prisoner on an aircraft was a big deal.

• 14:31Speaker 06

  I've never seen a prisoner in handcuffs before, and he was a pretty scruffy-looking dude. It was a little intimidating, knowing that he was on the plane.

• 14:39Speaker 03

  That night, there were nine passengers and the pilot on the plane. And of those passengers, only the pilot, my dad, the criminal, and the cop survived.

• 14:58Speaker 03

  Paul Arshaboe was a drifter and a vagabond. And Scott Deschamps was this rookie RCMP, this by-the-book cop. The day that Paul was picked up, he was in Kamloops. And Scott Deschamps, being a cop, an RCMP, based in Grab Prairie, where the sentencing was, had flown out to bring him back. And so, basically, from there, Paul and Scott Deschamps were handcuffed to one another.

• 15:33Speaker 06

  Scott Deschamps, the RCMP officer, came up to the counter and plunked down these two wrists that were chained together with handcuffs and said, "Where do you want us to sit?" There was a story in Vancouver of a 10-passenger airplane where the prisoner was in the back and he broke free and he was climbing over the seats trying to get to the pilot. Well, in this plane, the Navo, there's actually an aisle down the middle. So I said, "I know exactly where you're sitting. You're sitting at the back of the plane." And that's where I put him. That was as far away as I could put him from me in the cockpit.

• 16:01Speaker 03

  They had been in airports all day long and on standby and several long waits. And they got to talking. And Scott could see that Paul wasn't a dangerous, malicious guy. They had started to form this kind of rapport. They got on, they were seated on the plane at their final leg, and Paul turned to Scott and said, "Hey, can you just take these off me for the flight?"

• 16:30Speaker 05

  And I remember Deschamps and Arshaboe talking, and he said, "Now, take these handcuffs off for the flight, although it's against RCMP rules to do that."

• 16:47Speaker 03

  But at that point, he really felt that this guy was of no risk whatsoever. He would be fine.

• 16:56Speaker 06

  Getting out of there, I was running behind. I had to get going. Everything started out okay, but I was just trying to decide what to do along the way. We were one of the only airlines flying in this terrible weather.

• 17:06Speaker 03

  The wings were icing up and there were huge sheets of ice building on the forward edges of the wing.

• 17:13Speaker 06

  My deice equipment didn't work and I'm flying in a severe icing situation. And I'd actually discussed this with the passengers. I said, "Hey, you're going to hear banging against the fuselage. It's just chunks of ice coming off the prop. It's no big deal." Well, it is a big deal.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  He's doing dead reckoning. I mean, this is before GPS and all of these tools that would help a pilot. He was trying to do mathematical equations. How far out was he? How far back? And what he didn't realize was the thickness of this ice had really slowed the progress of the plane. And he was 20 miles further back than he thought he was.

• 17:52Speaker 06

  I said, "Hey, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go down and try to land in this little airport. And if I can't, I'm going to come right back up and I'm going to go back onto my flight plan." Just as I started leveling at about 900 feet to level at 800, which is the altitude that I decided I'm not going below 800 feet above ground. Over the airport, there was a hill about 850 feet high. Not a mountain, just a hill, just a rise in the inland, but unfortunately it was 850 feet high. So I literally leveled off in the trees.

• 18:23Speaker 06

  I heard the banging and then thought it was ice coming off the propellers. And it turned out to be the trees.

• 18:29Speaker 05

  It was a really loud rending of metal. Obviously, we're going through the trees, but stuff was being torn off the aircraft.

• 18:42Speaker 06

  You're talking seconds. So by the time my brain registered, the banging dismissed it. We had impact.

• 18:59Speaker 06

  Once I figured out that I was A, alive, there was no light because the batteries had been gone. I didn't even realize I was upside down. The wings came off, lost the nose cone right in front of us.

• 19:10Speaker 05

  The fuselage was virtually upside down. Because I know when I undid my seatbelt, I fell, you know, onto my hands and knees.

• 19:23Speaker 06

  Turned out to be the window beside me had broken and I could feel the air. And getting out of that airplane would have been impossible for me in the front. If the window hadn't broken, I would have had a real hard time breaking the window. There's no exit up front.

• 19:40Speaker 05

  My glasses were gone. I found my coat and put it on.

• 19:45Speaker 05

  And there was a lot of groaning, alive but unconscious. It was awful.

• 19:53Speaker 06

  Larry followed me out and I didn't, it wasn't until I was outside till I saw him and I was on my hands and knees. And I remember looking to my left and seeing Paul standing there and he had gone out a window. He was literally uninjured. He had a scratch on his forehead that had bled a bit. Other than that, he was untouched.

• 20:16Speaker 06

  We kind of gather ourselves, but Paul was right from the get-go adamant that he had to get Scott. So they had developed a pretty good relationship, which is why he was uncuffed.

• 20:26Speaker 03

  And as it happened, it was that move that ended up saving Scott's life. Because had Paul Archibald been handcuffed, there's nothing he could have done to save his captor.

• 20:39Speaker 06

  He went in there. And when he was in, he was digging around for Scott. And I remember Scott started to come around and I can't imagine how stressful that was for Scott to wake up, not know where you are and know you're trapped.

• 20:52Speaker 05

  The shop was saying, "I can't breathe. I can't breathe."

• 20:58Speaker 03

  And he was upside down?

• 20:59Speaker 05

  He seemed to be jammed into the snow somehow.

• 21:03Speaker 06

  And Paul was able to dig him out and bring Scott out.

• 21:10Speaker 05

  We tramped through the snow because the snow was good two and a half feet deep. Yeah.

• 21:16Speaker 05

  And we tramped through the snow, maybe, I don't know, a couple hundred feet from the airplane crash. Sort of to make a path. Yeah. And trapped out a little space.

• 21:31Speaker 06

  Somehow, this fire appeared. Paul got a fire going in the deep snow. Everything's wet. And then we eventually ended up around the fire. And that fire saved us for sure.

• 21:43Speaker 05

  There's a lot of stuff in the plane, papers and stuff that we burned. Yeah. So we burned whatever we could. And then there was scraps of wood lying around. But it was wet because it was in the snow. So we would try and pull bark off trees from up high.

• 22:05Speaker 03

  That night, there were nine passengers. These were all local people who either worked in the city or had been in the city and were desperate to get home that night. And six of those people did not ever leave that hillside.

• 22:21Speaker 06

  Most of the seats broke loose, except for Paul's. His was actually anchored because it's bolted in. Everybody else's is just clipped in. And if we'd all had seats like that, who knows what would have happened? But that was where the fatalities came from. The seats all broke loose because they're designed to come out quickly. Because we also did medevacs.

• 22:46Glynn Washington?

  Stay tuned. Our four survivors are bracing for a long, cold night in the remote Canadian wilderness. We'll return. Snap Judgment.

• 23:05Glynn Washington?

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• 25:20Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment. You're listening to the Into the Abyss episode. And when last we left, four men had just survived the crash of Wapiti Airlines Flight 402. There's Eric Vogel, the 24-year-old pilot who's flying the plane, politician Larry Shabin, rookie cop Scott Duchamp, and Paul Archambault, who's being escorted to court for sentencing as together they shiver by the fire in the middle of the blizzard. You can only wonder if help is on the way. Snap Judgment.

• 25:55Speaker 06

  I had thought that I can't tell these guys I'm the pilot because they're going to get pretty upset with me. The prisoner I never trusted. I thought, okay, this could go sideways. Scott was immobile. He was laying on the ground. He had torn all his intercostal muscles and he couldn't move. So he basically laid in the snow beside the fire. And I thought, okay, he's not going to be able to protect me. And he kept asking for his briefcase. He wanted his gun. And I was concerned why he wanted his gun. But he was thinking bears and wolves and things. And he wanted to have his gun, but it was long gone. Being on my hands and knees in the snow, trying to get my head around what I had just done, and I knew it was me. And of course, I knew I had done it.

• 26:39Speaker 06

  I was ready to give up right there. And this was a pretty helpless feeling. The pilot's responsible. It's still my flight, my passengers. I'm supposed to go now and like the captain of the ship. And I had no skills. I was supposed to gather everybody up and get them to the fire and start a fire and signal for help and just had nothing. And it was probably the other voices and Larry being beside me that kept me going.

• 27:06Speaker 03

  He was so ashamed and tortured by what he'd done that this was his fault and the deaths of these people were on his conscience. I mean, remember, he was 24. He was just a kid. Eric didn't tell them until quite a bit later, when they were sitting around the fire, that he was the pilot.

• 27:27Speaker 06

  I told them that I'm the pilot and of course they said, "What happened?" And I tried to tell them the whole story right from the beginning.

• 27:34Speaker 03

  One of the big things with Wapiti Airline is it had been cited for all sorts of infractions. There'd been a line of pilots who'd gone to the Transportation Canada saying, "This is an unsafe airline," pushing the weather, making pilots fly when they were exhausted, making them drop down below the acceptable ceilings, maintenance issues where the planes weren't properly maintained and there were mechanical issues. So this airline was known. It was known in the industry to be one of these bad operators.

• 28:11Speaker 06

  Apparently, we were under a super-secret probation. They were putting people on the flights to monitor it. And I thought, "Well, how can this company keep operating?" We had been led to believe that they had an ace in the hole. They had two people that were supporting the company, and whenever they got in trouble, these people would write a letter and make a phone call and say, "Hey, don't shut these guys down." So they acted a bit invincible, that they could do what they wanted, they were protected, and it just deflated us because now we can't even go to Transport Canada for help. We were basically, "We're on our own, and you are on your own." But they knew. When I got to the part about how this company was able to operate this way, and I said, "There's people out there that were supporting this company," and Larry admitted right away. He

• 28:54Speaker 06

  goes, "This is pretty crazy that I'm on board this flight because I'm one of those people and the other ones in the aircraft."

• 29:04Speaker 05

  Vogel was really good. He was really hurting in terms of mentally hurting because he could just tell. I mean, he was the guy, he was the pilot of the plane that down.

• 29:21Speaker 05

  And in addition to that, he was hurt physically. And, but he worked at keeping the fire going and helping until he couldn't move anymore.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  Eric was relentless in his efforts to try and make things right. He was trying to do everything within his power, even though he had a punctured lung. He was coughing up blood. His hands were mangled, they were unusable because the window of the cockpit had come at him and just torn up his hands.

• 29:55Speaker 06

  I felt weak and it was probably the blood loss. If I'd kept trying to walk around, I probably would have collapsed, but I just kind of gave up and sat down. I remember being really cold. I was in a light cotton shirt and I'd had a parka that I had from the Arctic days and then I'd given that to Scott because he's laying in the snow.

• 30:15Speaker 05

  It was really trying to keep Deschamps comfortable. And then after that, Arshabou and I kept hauling whatever we could find to keep the fire going.

• 30:27Speaker 06

  Keeping the fire going was pretty tough and we were running out of things to burn and there was two aircraft seats that were outside, so the plane opened up in the front and wreckage had been strewn, it was quite a debris trail. And we found a chair and I said, "Throw that chair in the fire." And I remember Scott saying, "That's not going to burn, that's an aircraft seat." And I said, "Yeah, actually it is." We placed the seat over top of the small fire and it never was a big fire until we put the seat in and this seat flashed up. And it just was like a Roman candle. And it was crazy and they wanted to burn the other one. I said, "No, hang on, this is like a flare. We've got nothing to signal with. Keep the other seat."

• 31:10Speaker 06

  We put it aside and we thought, "When we hear them or see them, we're going to put the seat in and that'll be our signal fire." And we held out for quite a while until we were super cold and freezing again and we thought, "Screw it, we're going to burn the other seat." So we ended up burning both seats.

• 31:27Speaker 03

  My dad had given Paul Archambault his cigarettes that night to hang on to, and they'd lit cigarettes together and wandered into the forest.

• 31:38Speaker 05

  Archambault had a lot of nervous energy.

• 31:45Speaker 05

  I'd hurt my hands from whatever damage because my hands were all beat up, and my glasses were gone, so I had trouble handling my cigarettes. So I said, "You carry them." And the little bugger was a chain smoker, so they were gone. I mean, it was, I think, almost a full pack, and they were gone by about 2:00 in the morning. It was funny.

• 32:12Speaker 06

  Larry, I didn't know he wore glasses, so he lost his glasses, and he wouldn't sit down. He was very fidgety, and it turned out he had a broken tailbone, and it wasn't comfortable to sit down, but he insisted on standing the whole night. And Paul was all over the place and running around. And Scott was immobile. He couldn't get up. He just, he kind of just laid there by the fire, and eventually I did too. I couldn't get up anymore, and I apologized, I couldn't get more wood, so we really relied on Paul, and Larry would follow him. And I don't know how Larry did it all night. And Scott and I basically was laid by the fire. We decided that if we had fallen asleep, we might not wake up because of hypothermia, and so we just kept each other awake. He said, "You know, you can't fall asleep, can't fall asleep."

• 32:58Speaker 05

  It's funny, you know, in case I got here, all complete strangers. And then, as the evening wore on, there's a little more chatter. And I think part of the shock, the realization of what had happened and that sort of thing.

• 33:18Speaker 06

  I don't think I would have survived if I was by myself. You know, forget survivor's guilt, just being there on your own would have been pretty horrendous. And without a fire, I wouldn't have survived. So, yeah, having each other to talk to, and we all told... Personal stories and some jokes.

• 33:37Speaker 05

  We were sitting there and I said, "If you had one wish that you could have fulfilled right now, what would you wish for?" And Deshawn talked about his relationship with his wife where they hadn't been getting along and she wanted to have a child and he didn't want to have a child. And he said, "I'd tell my wife I'm sorry and let's have a child and make this thing work." And I said, "If you, you know, if you had one wish, I'd put a joint." That's what he wanted, a joint.

• 34:22Speaker 03

  What would you say?

• 34:23Speaker 05

  I said, "I want a hot bath." That's what I want.

• 34:26Speaker 03

  You're cool.

• 34:27Speaker 05

  That's what I wanted. I mean, it was really, the only thing I wanted right there was a hot bath.

• 34:32Speaker 03

  You were really cool, Dad?

• 34:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was cool. Dirty and grungy.

• 34:38Speaker 06

  My mom made these famous chocolate chip cookies. They're big cakes. So when I left that morning for my flight, not knowing when I would eat again, I took four of these cookies. I don't know why I took four. They're quite big, but I took four and I wrapped them up and I put them in my flight bag. And the flight bag is jammed between our passenger seats in the front. And I told Paul, I said, "Paul, when you're in the plane, you need to go into my flight bag and there's four cookies in there and bring out whatever you find." So he came back. The bag couldn't be removed, but he came back and he found the cookies. Well, we all got a cookie, which was pretty amazing. And he gave me my logbook and I looked at this and I said, "Well, I'm never gonna need this again." So I was tearing

• 35:19Speaker 06

  out the pages and feeding them into the fire. And I can't remember who it was, said, "Well, you're gonna need that." And I think, you know what? I'm never gonna need this again. This is, I'm done. No one's ever gonna hire me after this. So we burned the logbook.

• 35:36Speaker 03

  In those moments of hopelessness, there were snippets of conversation where they would talk about how demoralized they were and this sense that it's not going to happen. We're not going to get out of here alive.

• 35:53Speaker 06

  We crashed a little after 8 o'clock at night. Probably, I think it was 20 after 8. So it was most likely in the middle of the night, probably after midnight, that they were dropping these flares. And they were dropping the flares for the ground crews to aim towards these flares. And the first one they dropped was right on our heads. So you can imagine how excited we were to see that. And I thought, there you go. They dropped a magnesium flare right over us. That was a pretty good signal. And I said, they found us. And everybody's pretty excited. And I'm listening, and the plane flew away. And then it dropped another one, miles away. And then it dropped a third one. So when I saw the third flare drop, I said, guys, we got a problem. And they said, what? I said, they don't know where we are. And he goes, why do you say that? And I said, well, look, why would they drop flares

• 36:36Speaker 06

  way over there and way over there if they think we're here? And it got real quiet again. And I said, they're just dropping flares. They don't know where we are. But it's good that they're dropping them near us. That's helpful. But I said, they're just dropping them in the area. So I said, again, until this thing circles. So we went back to basically ignoring the plane. It would fly over, and we wouldn't even look up anymore.

• 37:11Glynn Washington?

  After the break, with all hope fading after darkness falls, can the survivors keep each other alive until the morning? Stay tuned.

• 37:31Glynn Washington?

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• 38:28Speaker 07

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• 39:11Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Into the Abyss episode. My name is Glynn Washington. And before we left, search and rescue efforts to locate the crash site have been going on throughout the night. But neither wreckage nor survivors have been spotted through the harsh snowstorm. Snap Judgment.

• 39:32Speaker 06

  So the next day, the sun came up and I said, "Guys, we're in trouble. We can't see. And if we can't see up, they can't see us." So there was the overcast and low fog. So I said, "It's gonna be a while yet." And we could see the plane, which was pretty tough to look at. It was about fifty feet away from us. And if you can imagine a white aircraft in the snow and a bunch of black objects around a fire that's smoking, not even a flame, it's just smoldering. There was nothing for them to see. They're looking for the plane, they're not looking for us. They flew over and they were gone, because they're going real fast. And I said, "No, don't get excited. That's cool. These guys are sure trying. They're looking."

• 40:14Speaker 06

  And we could see all these people looking out the back of the door, and the plane disappeared.

• 40:19Speaker 03

  There was a point where the plane was there and then gone. You said it was really demoralizing at that point.

• 40:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's right, because we were waving and waved whatever we could. Really seemed to come in and roll over the trees.

• 40:34Speaker 06

  So they left, and I thought, "Okay, they're all looking somewhere else." And it got quiet again. And then I heard the Twin Otter come. And he flew over and went right by. And I thought, "Okay, cool. Twin Otter's here, can go a little slower."

• 40:48Speaker 06

  And in that break in the sunshine, and it's the only break we'd ever seen, and it was right over top of us, maybe from the the smoke from the fire, I don't know. It just opened up and they looked down and they saw us all there.

• 41:01Speaker 06

  The pilot put it into a tight, tight 360. Encircled, basically stood it on its wing, right on top of us. And then I said, "Okay, they've found us." And I could see him in the window.

• 41:17Speaker 06

  And that was a pretty good feeling. And I said, "Okay, we might get out of this."

• 41:24Speaker 03

  Around mid-morning, 10:30, the plane had been spotted. And in a break in the clouds, the search and rescuers had seen that there were three people around the fire.

• 41:44Speaker 06

  You could hear the big blades of this schnuck coming in. And it flew over.

• 41:51Speaker 06

  And hovered off, not over top of us fortunately, because it's pretty chilly under those blades. And they started coming down the rope. And then it flew out of the way. And the crew came by the plane. I could see them looking at the plane as they walked by. And they could see us. And they walked up. But the first thing he said was, "I guess the pilot's dead." And of course, the guys thought that was funny. They said, "No, he's sitting right there." And the look on his face. But I said, "No, no, I'm right here."

• 42:27Speaker 03

  And then how did they get you up out of the bush?

• 42:30Speaker 05

  They winched us up, this big schnuck helicopter hovered over top, noisy as could be.

• 42:38Speaker 06

  They started doing their triage and I kept saying, "I'm not going first, take everybody else." And they scooped up Larry and Paul because they were ambulatory, they were standing, it was easy to scoop them. And I just sat there. And I remember the guy gave me an IV bag to put inside my jacket. Paul had found us some clothes and I had someone's jacket on. I was looking down at Scott while they were packaging them up and getting them ready to hoist them up. And I was kind of sitting up. And then I remember thinking that I was doing pretty good. And one of the reasons I didn't bleed to death, the doctor told me was because of the cold. Your body goes into shock and it shuts down your extremities. And I had lacerations, my wristwatch slid open my wrist.

• 43:21Speaker 06

  Nothing was coming out of it, it was just a big gaping hole that I could put my finger in and no blood was coming out. So that made sense. I didn't bleed to death because of the cold. So he said, "The cold actually helped you guys."

• 43:33Speaker 06

  I felt really warm and it was a weird feeling. I just felt warm all over and I thought, "Okay, I'm being rescued, this is good." And the doc came over, looked at my pupils and said, "This one goes next." And they scooped me out of there.

• 43:51Speaker 08

  Six people, including Alberta NDP leader Grant Naughtley, died when the Wapiti Airlines flight smashed into a hill. Four people, including pilot Erik Vogel and provincial housing minister Larry Shaben, survived the crash.

• 44:04Speaker 06

  For me, it was like, how am I going to face the world? How am I going to face everything, knowing what I'd done? Did I want to survive? It was hard to feel that good about being alive. And that started right away.

• 44:21Speaker 03

  Did you ever think you weren't going to make it, Dad?

• 44:23Speaker 05

  No.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  Never?

• 44:25Speaker 05

  No.

• 44:27Speaker 03

  You said once that you kind of mark that date every year and you look at what you've done with it.

• 44:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, and that's what I was saying this morning. I think that I haven't done those extra 19 years justice somehow, in terms of using the time.

• 44:48Speaker 06

  Larry was amazing, such a gentleman, and really helped me through the whole thing. He would reach out to us. It started with phone calls and then later it became emails and messages, but it was an annual thing on October 19th. I used to take the day off and just reflect and just do nothing. But as the years went on, I just kind of went, okay, today's the day, and kind of just thought about it all day. I was realistic. I thought, well, my airline career is done. I know there's lots of pilots out there that have had accidents, but this was pretty high profile. But in the meantime, I'd gone back to being a volunteer firefighter, and I really enjoyed it. I thought, this is a great career. And I got on hired in the fire department. It's a very respectable job. It's a good calling, and it gave me back my self-respect. And I embraced it.

• 45:33Speaker 03

  The survivors, the three who were still alive toward the end of my dad's life, had been in touch. But there was a point when it was coming up to the 20 year of the reunion. And I think my dad was getting older. He was 69. Probably sensed that life was passing and he basically said, "We need to meet. We need to see each other all together, face to face." And he arranged for the three survivors to meet.

• 46:02Speaker 06

  We went for a little meal at a nearby hotel and we just didn't stop talking the whole time. We joked about doing a reunion in another 20 years, but I think Larry knew he wasn't well at the time. It's pretty amazing that they've kept me in their life, considering what I had done. So that always amazed me, that I was forgiven right from that first night.

• 46:27Speaker 03

  In 2008, when my dad was dying of cancer, Erik Vogel reached out to me. And, you know, it was a month short of the anniversary of the crash, so they'd obviously been in touch. And I received an email from Eric.

• 46:45Speaker 06

  I had a lot of things I wanted to say to him. I was 24. He was pretty worldly, he was a politician, he knew what was going on and just the way he treated me right from the get-go, and I did not expect that. I felt I owed him everything because of the way he treated me right from that first moment.

• 47:01Speaker 03

  He said, "Could you please just read this to your dad? I know he's in his last days." And I never got a chance. I didn't get back to Edmonton from Vancouver before my dad died, but I was able to read Eric's email at my dad's service. And in it, he wrote, "To Larry, I'm writing this with a heavy heart from my new desk job. The only reason that I looked forward to October 19th was because I would get a note from you, reminding us that we were lucky to be alive and how great life was going. It always made me smile.

• 47:45Speaker 03

  You've been a hero in my new life, Larry, and I've tried to make you proud with our new lease on this life." I was hoping to give you a new tie pin to go with the bugle that I gave you. This one is my new captain's bugle that came with my promotion. I know it's just a job, but this job helped me redeem myself to you and many others. I will miss you, my friend. And now I have to explain to my chief across the room, why a six foot three fire captain is crying at his desk.

• 48:38Glynn Washington?

  A huge thank you to Erik Vogel, to the late Larry Shaben, and to his daughter Carol for sharing this story with Snap. There is so much more we're not able to share with you about Erik and Larry's experience. To find out more about what transpired with WAPY Flight 402, check out Carol Shaben's book, Into the Abyss. A special thank you to Nikah Singh for his help with this story. The original score for this piece was by Renzo Goryo. It was produced by Beau Walsh.

• 49:19Glynn Washington?

  I understand, never enough stories, never enough. But if you want more, if you need more, travel the world with us and follow Snap Judgment, the podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Hours of adventure await. And if you want to join the Snap-tastic conversations, know that Snap's on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Don't miss a beat. Snap is brought to you by the team that always texts to make sure you made it home safe. Except, of course, for Mark Ristich. He insists on calling on the phone. I don't know why. I don't want to speak to anybody. I think I've made that plane. There's Nancy Lopez, Patrick C. Miller, David Exame,

• 50:03Glynn Washington?

  Anna Sussman, Renzo Goryo, Shayna Shealy, Taylor Cot, Flo Wiley, John Facio, Marissa Dodge, Beau Walsh, Andy Nguyen, and Zara Norbosh.

• 50:15Glynn Washington?

  And you may have heard that this is not the news. No way is this news. In fact, you could walk outside, hop into the back of a waiting car, explain to the Uber driver where you're going, only to have him tell you that, ah, he ain't no Uber driver. Because this ain't no Uber. But, you know, what the heck? He is going that way. Could certainly give you a ride, true story. And you would still, still, even then, not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is P R X.