Pilot crashes plane and spends the night in alligator-infested swamp
A pilot crashed his small plane into the Florida Everglades and spent nine hours overnight in the alligator-infested swamp.
The pilot, who has not been identified, was the only person on board the single-engine Cessna Skyhawk 172M plane that plummeted around 4am on Halloween, CBS Miami reported.
An individual with the flight school that the aircraft was registered to called 911 and rescue crews were deployed on airboats. Southwest Broward County fire personnel soon realized that a hoist was needed to rescue the pilot stranded in a remote area of the Everglades near Miami Lakes, and contacted Miami-Dade Fire Rescue.
‘The area that he was in was hard to access by airboats,’ Miami Dade Fire Rescue Captain Andy Borges told NBC 6 South Florida.
Chopper 4 footage shows a first responder dangling down to the wing of the small plane where the pilot was waiting. He was strapped with a harness and lifted up by the Miami-Dade rescue chopper.
‘He was out there since four in the morning, so it’s alligators and mosquitos and everything else that is out there,’ said Borges. ‘A little dehydrated. So, very happy to see us.’
The man suffered a wounded leg and was transported to Hollywood Memorial Regional Hospital and remained there on Tuesday receiving treatment.
‘To be able to seemingly walk away with just a leg injury after putting an aircraft down in the Everglades with the thick brush is an amazing feat in itself,’ Broward Sheriff’s Office fire Chief Michael Kane told CBS Miami.
‘We’re very grateful that he’s OK.’
The plane departed from Lake Okeechobee. It suddenly dropped from around 2,000 feet and regained altitude for a moment, then spiraled down into the swamp, according to FlightAware.
‘Everything is fine,’ the flight school, called the Pilot Training Center, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. ‘The pilot is fine, thank you very much.’
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