Autumn Veatch tells how she tried to rescue grandparents from plane crash

Sixteen-year-old Autumn Veatch, the sole survivor of the crash, told CNN her grandparents, Leland and Sharon Bowman, were screaming as the plane burned

Autumn Veatch, the 16-year-old sole survivor of a plane crash that killed her grandparents, has told how she battled unsuccessfully to pull them from the wreckage.

In an interview with CNN broadcast on Thursday evening, Veatch said Leland and Sharon Bowman were alive and screaming as the aircraft burned: “I was trying to pull them out and I just couldn’t do it. There was too much fire and I’m a small person … I was trying, but there was a point – it’s just not happening.”

Veatch was travelling on the small plane from Montana with her step-grandparents, Leland and Sharon Bowman, last weekend when it crashed into a mountainside in north-central Washington state.

The teenager, who survived the impact, was forced to hike for two days to reach safety, finally making it to a highway on Monday, where two men stopped to help her.

Telling her story two days after she was released from Three Rivers hospital in Brewster, Veatch said there had been panic aboard the small aircraft when the three passengers realised they were about to crash.

“We completely lost sight of what was going on at all … We couldn’t see a single thing, it was all white, and GPS wasn’t really working.”

At first, Veatch said, she was scared but thought her grandparents would be able to handle the plane.“Then they both started freaking out … yelling, ‘turn the GPS back on.

“And then Leland said that he was going to go up, try to fly up, because there were mountains – he was like, we’re going to crash into the side of a mountain; I can’t see anything that’s going on.

“So we started to go up and it was all white, and then it was all trees, and then it was all fire.”

Veatch said she had not been injured in the original crash: “I was hunched down so the impact itself didn’t really hurt me, but the fire did … I got out, my face got burned, my hair was burning.”

Her grandparents were trapped in the burning aircraft and Veatch said her immediate reaction was to try to pull them free.

“They were alive, they were both screaming … There was no way I could get to grandma because she was on the far side and there was nothing I could do, but I assumed that if I got grandpa out first then maybe she would come out.

“I was trying to pull them out and I just couldn’t do it. There was too much fire and I’m a small person.”

Showing her bandaged hand, she went on: “That’s what happened to my hand – I was trying to pull them out but there was a point, like, it’s just not happening.”

Realising she would have to make her way to safety alone, Veatch said she remembered the survival TV shows she had watched with her father and their over-riding message: “Going downhill and finding bodies of water always leads to civilisation.”

“My instinct was to go downhill so I started going downhill … I was obviously distressed, crying and really scared to be alone in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

“I found a little tiny bit of water that was going downhill and I just followed it … It grew into a river and I followed it.”

But in the hours that followed, “I was certain I was going to die … The second day, the morning after, I was certain I would die of hypothermia because I was freezing.”

It took two days for Veatch to make it through the Cascade range to highway 20, close to the small town of Mazama.

Even once Veatch had made it to the highway, she walked several miles without coming across assistance; CNN reported a number of cars passed her by without stopping.

Eventually she settled in a parking lot at the head of the tauntingly-titled Easy Pass trail, before two men stopped to check on her, driving her to Mazama, from where she called 911.

She was treated in hospital for dehydration and muscle tissue breakdown caused by vigorous exercise without food or water, before being released on Tuesday evening.

Dr James Wallace said Veatch’s “innate knowledge, wisdom to pick the right path out and really to do everything right in an environment that was very foreign to her” had saved her life.

On Thursday, two bodies were recovered from the wreckage by search crews.

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