Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican nominee for governor in Wisconsin, said he swam to land and suffered minor injuries after a plane made an emergency landing in a lake Saturday.
As he headed home from the La Crosse County Lincoln Day Dinner in Onalaska, Wisconsin, the plane in which Tiffany was traveling lost power as it approached the Wausau Downtown Airport, he said. The pilot made an emergency water landing in nearby Lake Wausau.
“After landing, we called 911. As the plane began to submerge, we exited the aircraft and swam to a shallow area, where we waited until emergency responders reached us by boat,” Tiffany, 68, wrote on social media.
The congressman and the pilot both suffered minor injuries, Tiffany said.
“God was watching over us tonight. … An experience like this reminds you just how precious life is,” he wrote, adding that he was grateful to be in the hospital with his wife by his side.
The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement it was investigating. The Wausau Fire Department and the Wausau Downtown Airport did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Tiffany, a congressman from Wisconsin’s rural north, faces Democratic nominee David Crowley, the top elected official in Milwaukee County, in the Nov. 3 election.
Crowley posted on X that he was “grateful to God that Congressman Tiffany and no one else was hurt in this horrifying incident, which could have been a tragedy if not for the heroism of the pilot.”
He said he wished the pilot and the congressman a “quick recovery.”
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