Pilot reunited with rescuers: they’re heroes
Published: October 18, 2005
Murray Preusche’s angels didn’t come down from the clouds with wings and harps, but rather parachutes and first-aid kits.
“I thought angels were dressed in white, but these guys were dressed in orange,” said Preusche, who was reunited with Sgt. Jean Tremblay and Master Cpl. Paul Lloyd yesterday for the first time since the two men saved his life after his plane crashed on the side of a mountain just west of Penticton June
It was one of the most daring rescue operations ever executed by the 442 Search and Rescue Squadron. There were no openings in the thick forest for a helicopter to drop the Search and Rescue Technicians (SAR Techs) so the men had to make a low-level jump from a Buffalo search plane.
At 1,800 feet, they parachuted out over the crash site and plunged into the forest canopy. Their chutes caught the top of the trees and they dangled there before repelling 70 feet to the forest floor.
“I remember thinking at the time that all that training paid off because I just felt confident and calm,” said Lloyd.
In his 22-year military career, it was the first time Tremblay had taken such an jump outside training.
“This is definitely one of the highlights [in terms] of rescue missions,” he said. “It’s a big deal. It’s not a mission you get to do often.”
After hitting the forest floor, Lloyd and Tremblay then crashed through the thick underbrush of fallen trees to reach Preusche, who managed to scramble out of his plane and was bleeding profusely.
“Those trees just weren’t going to stop them; it sounded like a tank coming,” said Preusche, who was on his way from Lethbridge to Port Alberni when the late-spring crash occurred. He was just west of Penticton when his Velocity RG plane was getting boxed in by clouds. He tried to climb out when he entered a flat spin. He said he managed to gain control but the ground was 100 feet too close.
“The impact was horrendous,” he recalls. “I didn’t have any ideas of not surviving but when I looked back at it, I think it was a non-survivable crash.”
Preusche suffered two breaks in his lower left leg and the bone was crushed below the knee. He suffered a cut to the head, but the injury that nearly claimed his life was a gash on the back side of his thigh caused when a tree trunk ripped through the plane’s fuselage.
“I reached to the back of my leg and it was like a sponge,” he recalls, noting he used his belt as a tourniquet.
“We knew his vitals were quite low,” said Lloyd. “I couldn’t even get a blood pressure [reading].”
Lloyd bandaged the thigh wound and administered an IV. By then, two other SAR Techs were lowered by a Cormorant helicopter and they struggled through the thick underbrush to a newly made clearing.
Preusche was flown to Penticton where he was treated for his wounds and returned to Comox yesterday on crutches to offer his gratitude.
“After someone saves your life, the least you can do is say thank-you,” he said. “They’re heroes.”
Yesterday’s reunion was good for both sides.
“It’s fantastic to talk to him,” said Tremblay. “He’s so happy to be here.”
And he even got a souvenir - a bumper sticker, saying “My ass was saved by 442.”
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