Posted: Feb 4, 2012 6:02 PM by Laura Wilson (KAJ News)
Updated: Feb 6, 2012 7:00 AM
KALISPELL- Three people are lucky to be alive after crashing their plane upside down into a home earlier on Saturday afternoon in Kalispell.
Authorities are continuing to investigate the unusual circumstances in which a small aircraft spiraled out of control and crashed into a residential home. But what's even more unusual is that all three passengers inside the aircraft walked away with only minor cuts and bruises.
The details surrounding the crash are still limited but Kalispell Fire Chief Dave Dedman says it appears the pilot had taken off from the Kalispell City Airport airstrip on Saturday afternoon, before crashing in a nearby neighborhood on the other side of Airport Road.
"All of a sudden we heard this plane. It started sputtering out. It came over our house and started crashing through trees and went down the street where it ended up upside down in somebody's house," witness Gary Sams recalled.
Sams and his dad Kim say they ran over to the plane after it crashed on Golden Eye Court in search of survivors, but both were skeptical whether they'd find any.
"You're thinking you're going to have some fatalities, but everyone was good," Kim said.
"We started digging into the side of the plane, and a couple of dogs came out first. And then we heard some muffling noises. We dug a little further and there was a passenger hanging upside down. She said 'get me out of here,' and that's what we did," Gary added.
The pilot and his other female passenger were able to get out of the plane and exit through the front door of the house they crashed into.
"The homeowner was not injured. He was actually in the upstairs of the house at the time of the impact. He did assist the passengers of the plane out of the plane itself, so we thank him for that," Dedman told us.
He added the pilot and his two passengers refused medical treatment, but did later go to Kalispell Regional Medical Center on their own accord.
"It's pretty amazing actually, if you look at the amount of damage. How they were able to self-extricate from that plane and walk away. I don't understand how they did that, but luckily they did," Dedman observed.
"It's just amazing. It just shows God's looking out for us. And luckily, there were people around to do something," Gary concluded.
Dedman says all of the agencies on scene were able to secure the perimeter, and are now waiting on the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board to come investigate and review the evidence.
Authorities say the investigation is ongoing and could last for months.
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