For five hours, they were stranded at sea, not knowing when or whether help might arrive. Their plane had crashed off the coast of Melbourne, Fla., and the 11 survivors were under a rain tarp as a thunderstorm began to roll through.
They were safely rescued on Tuesday after their harrowing ordeal, after an equally intense recovery effort, officials said. All 11 people aboard the plane, all Bahamian adults, were in stable condition, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Wednesday. Their identities have not been released.
Their small plane, a Beechcraft BE30, crashed around noon on Tuesday about 80 miles off the coast, the authorities said. An hour earlier, the plane’s emergency locator transmitter sent a distress signal, the Coast Guard said in a news release.
“From what I’ve seen, I mean, for all of those people to survive is pretty miraculous,” Maj. Elizabeth Piowaty, the commander of one of the Air Force planes involved in the rescue, said during the news conference.
An Air Force combat search-and-rescue helicopter crew was training off the east coast of Florida when the civilian plane transmitted its distress signal, the Air Force Reserve Command said in a news release.
The helicopter was asked to check the signal and then redirected to assist in the search for survivors alongside other Coast Guard and Air Force crews.
Within minutes, rescuers found a group of people clinging to a life raft, huddled under a tarp, in choppy waters.
“They had been in the raft for about five hours, and you could tell just by looking at them that they were in distress physically, mentally and emotionally,” Capt. Rory Whipple, an Air Force combat rescue officer, said during the news conference.
Rescuers dropped a bundle of food, water, tools and two extra rafts to the survivors, which offered them “a great relief” that help had arrived, Major Piowaty said.
Some survivors climbed onto the spare rafts before Captain Whipple and other Air Force pararescue men jumped into the water and swam to them. From there, rescuers examined each survivor for injuries and hoisted them to safety.
“They didn’t even know we were coming until we were directly overhead, so you have to imagine the emotional injuries that they sustained out there, not knowing if someone was going to rescue them,” Captain Whipple said.
The survivors were taken to Melbourne Orlando International Airport for emergency medical treatment, the Coast Guard said. Officials declined to provide further details on their injuries during the news conference.
Rescuers were five minutes away from their “bingo” time — a hard deadline for when they need to leave a rescue scene because their aircraft is too low on gas — when they hoisted the last person out of the water, Lt. Col. Matt Johnson, the commander of the Air Force helicopter, said during the news conference.
“We locked in and did what we had to do to make sure everyone came home in one piece,” Captain Whipple said.
The plane had taken off from Marsh Harbor Airport in the Bahamas and was on its way to Grand Bahama International Airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, which said it was investigating the crash.
The plane apparently crashed because of engine failure, but Bahamian authorities were still investigating the cause, the Coast Guard said.
Alexandra E. Petri contributed reporting.
Hannah Ziegler is a general assignment reporter for The Times, covering topics such as crime, business, weather, pop culture and online trends.
The post 11 Rescued From Raft After Plane Crash Off the Coast of Florida appeared first on New York Times.
