With her step-grandparents dead or dying in the burning wreckage of their small aircraft, 16-year-old Autumn Veatch needed to somehow find her way off the remote, thickly forested Washington State mountainside where they crashed on Saturday afternoon last week.
Bruised by the impact, singed by the fire, fearing an explosion and knowing she could not help the other victims, the teen did what she could: She headed down a steep slope, following a creek to a river. She spent a night on a sand bar, where she felt safer. She drank small amounts of the flowing water, but worried that she might get sick if she drank more.
She followed the river to a trail, and the trail to a highway. Two men driving by stopped and picked her up on Monday afternoon, bringing her — about two full days after the crash — to the safety of a general store in Mazama, a tiny town in the heart of the state, near the North Cascades National Park.
Photo: AP
“We crashed, and I was the only one that made it out,” she told an emergency operator, after a store employee called for her. “I have a lot of burns on my hands and I am kind of covered in bruises and scratches and stuff.”
As authorities on Tuesday continued searching for the aircraft’s wreckage, aided by clues that Veatch provided, they also marveled at the wherewithal of a teenager who managed to survive — and to later joke from her hospital bed about how it was a good thing her dad made her watch the television show Survivor.
“She has got an amazing story and I hope she gets to tell it soon,” said Okanogan County Sheriff Frank Rogers, who had interviewed Veatch and relayed details of her ordeal to reporters.
The teen was released from Three Rivers Hospital in Brewster on Tuesday evening, hospital spokeswoman Melanie Neddo confirmed.
Neddo said she did not know where the young woman was headed. Veatch’s father, David Veatch, had traveled from his Bellingham home to be with her.
Rogers said the Beechcraft A-35 was flying over north-central Washington on its way from Montana when it entered a cloud bank.
The clouds suddenly parted, and from her seat behind the cockpit, Veatch could see a mountain and trees ahead, Roberts said.
Her step-grandfather, Leland Bowman, was piloting with his wife, Sharon, by his side. He tried to pull up — to no avail.
They struck the trees and the airplane plummeted to the ground and caught fire.
“When they came out of the clouds, she said it was obvious they were too low,” Rogers said. “They crashed right into the trees and hit the ground. She tried to do what she could to help her grandparents, but she could not because of the fire.”
Veatch had no life-threatening injuries, but was dehydrated and had developed a treatable muscle tissue breakdown caused by vigorous exercise without food or water, hospital chief executive Scott Graham said earlier.
“It is a miracle, no question about it,” Civil Air Patrol Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Lustick told reporters, saying that he has spent 30 years in search and rescue. “Moments of joy like this can be hard to find.”
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