"Can you imagine a seven-year-old losing her mother and sister and cousin in an aeroplane crash and then having to walk like she did from there to here?"
Sailor Gutzler walked a mile, through dense woods, at night, without shoes, in 40° temperature.
January 4, 2015
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22 comments:
Necessity is the mother of invention. She displayed normal human ability, much to the total awe of CNN talking heads.
"aeroplane."
What wee they flying, a Sopwith Camel?
I hope she saw a light and was walking towards it. Otherwise there were 360 degrees of directions she could have walked in and only about 5 to 10 led to safety.
Even so, there was a case back during the cold war when a B-52 crashed during an exercise. One of the crewmen who bailed out was separated from the other guys, but apparently saw the lights of a town and started walking towards them.
He fell into a creek and drowned.
"Big Mike said...
I hope she saw a light and was walking towards it. Otherwise there were 360 degrees of directions she could have walked in and only about 5 to 10 led to safety."
The events are over. She is safe. Why the hope and concern?
One hopes her father was not negligent in fueling or flight plans. If not she benefits as sole heir, with whomever is found at fault for maintenance or manufacture also kicking in several million more. But if they finger Daddy, then the cousin will get a chunk of Daddy's estate.
She needs a good lawyer.
That's a twin engine plane. Bad fuel ? He should have been able to continue on one engine as he was experienced.
As usual, the best coverage of US stories is in British newspapers.
By doing that she cut CNN's live, continuous coverage of another missing plane!
You know the media would prefer that she stayed at the crash site and do that whole Andes cannibalism thing.
I'm pretty sure the guy said woods not wood.
Curious, my thoughts too. Maybe the quote is from the Daily Mail, a UK paper.
I grew up in Ky playing in the woods not wood.
Maybe it's a vestige of British usage - e.g., Tulgey Wood, Great Birnam Wood.
But it's nice to see we have our priorities in order for a horrific/inspiring story like this.
@Curious George, it would be good if other crash survivors don't try to emulate her.
I'm not surprised one bit that a 7 year old follows through on the will to survive. She's an affront to the nanny staters trying to incrementally cut us off from the dangers of existence to make us all dependent of them for help.
God keep that little girl. I hope she has family taking her in.
Impressed with the amount of detail Brit papers stuff into their human-interest stories.
You do what you have to do; it is human nature.
My dad was in a deer stand about 15 years ago and the stand collapsed. He fell and broke his hip. He was a several hundred yards from his truck. No one was with him. He crawled for several hours to get back to his truck. He had to navigate a gully and a barbed wire fence between where he fell and the truck. He then somehow got himself into his truck with a broken hip and drove to a house on the property for help.
My mom and I had no idea where he was and started to get a little worried. Around 9pm we go a call from the person in the house that he was in the hospital. He was all kinds of scratched up from briars, barbed wire, sticks, and whatnot.
You do what you have to do and can do.
Well said, Lyle.
"One hopes her father was not negligent in fueling or flight plans."
Coming from a family of pilots (none of whom have crashed BTW), I consider it borderline negligent to have been flying his family at all -- given that private aviation is about 20 times more dangerous than driving (and, of course, commercial aviation is many times safer still than driving). And flying at night is even more dangerous than during the daytime (good luck making an emergency landing in the dark).
Well there are people who will do what is necessary but some of them are weird.
This guy is really weird.
"She displayed normal human ability, much to the total awe of CNN talking heads."
Jeez, give the kid some credit. For a child of 7, this was above normal. She will need the same trait to put her life back together with whatever her next family arrangements turn out to be.
Is it the most amazing thing ever? No. But she performed very well. A resourceful person.
The FAA and NTSB will investigate to try and determine the cause of this accident. The Piper Senaca has been in production since the early 1970s and has a good safety record. They'll try to determine what caused the engine trouble. They'll try and determine why the pilot wasn't able to continue flying with the remaining engine. It could be anything from mechanical failure to pilot error. The plane doesn't come with any voice or data recorders, so determing the cause(s) will be difficult and may take months. At this point, it's way too soon to be talking about lawyers and law suits.
RE: Human ability, go watch "Touching The Void".
What that little girl did took strength and focus. Good for her.
Hopefully she's got family who will take care of her and help her through the hardest part. Physical pain goes away pretty quick. Losing Mom and Dad...
Mark W, i tend to agree. I had my ticket for a couple of years, but I realized that I was a superman pilot only when I was alone. I would hate to think what my wife would be saying to me in front of my kids if i was gliding into the Ky darkness like this family.
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