Sunday, June 14, 2009

FIRST DAY AT ELIM















Elim was absolutely an awesome experience!! For starters.....when our tiny plane left Nome there were three passengers including me....two nurses (me and the wonderful lady "Sherry" training me) and a gentlemen that sat behind us. Sherry and I were right behind the pilot. As we took off the pilot turned around to Sherry and I and asked us to please look out the window for a red and white plane that might have went down that they had lost contact with the night before....due to fog (the very same reason our flight was delayed). The pilot looked like a big teddy bear grandpa type..just as nice as could be. We shared the info the pilot told us with the guy behind us. The pilot was flying VERY low to the ground and turning the plane from side to side so he he could get a view of the ground. ALL of us in the plane were intently scanning the ground looking for this plane....out of no where this guy behind me yells "I see something over there" IMMEDIATELY the pilot whipped that plane around totally off course (going up on our side!) and went to where the guy thought he saw something....ended up being scrap pieces of wood...the passenger was kinda embarrassed and the pilot was like "hey it was worth a try". When we finally touched down at the "airport" which is nothing more than a gravel strip in the middle of no where so I guess I should say....when we reach the landing strip we hitched a ride with our 14 bags of supplies with some people to the clinic. When we got to the clinic we noticed a military black hawk overhead as well as other military planes....we got word they found the "lost plane" and it had gone down just a mile from Elim and that the people in the plane had been killed. My greatest fear was that they were bringing the bodies to the clinic. They didn't ... they had men/women from Elim stand guard all around the plane till morning till the military could get there and take the bodies out..........what a horrible first night! The whole village was involved.

No comments:

Post a Comment