‘I Was Sure I Was Dead,’ Survivor of Crash Recalls

The scene was surrealistic--two men strapped in airplane seats in a field of snow. The sky was white, and Douglas Self could see nothing. He tried to move the man in the seat next to him and found that he was beyond help. Self unbuckled his seat belt and began running blindly through the storm, one shoe missing.

“I was sure I was dead,” he recalled. “It was like watching myself on TV, just looking down at it all in slow motion.”

Hearing a voice, Self found a hysterical blonde teen-ager who begged him to tell her where they were. He reached out to comfort her, and, somehow, the touch of another human being reassured him that he was alive.

Three days after the crash of Continental Airline’s Flight 1713, Self, a 29-year-old father of two from Kennewick, Wash., was finally able to talk about his ordeal.

His journey began Sunday in Texas, where he and five buddies had attended a convention on lawn care. The men were executives with Permagreen Lawn Care; all but Self were from Boise, Ida. He would fly that far with them, then drive the rest of the way home.

In San Antonio, mechanical trouble delayed their United Airlines flight, and they missed a connecting flight in Denver, but United found them six seats on Continental’s Flight 1713, and told them they could just make it if they got across the terminal in 10 minutes. The run proved unnecessary. Flight 1713 was delayed by the snowstorm too. Once on board, Self dozed.

His eyes were closed when the plane began to lift off. Suddenly, it wobbled, and one wing hit the ground.

“I knew we were going down,” he said. “I tightened my seat belt and put my head between my legs. People were screaming. I knew I was going to die.”

Self saw the plane start to split open.

“The next thing I remember, I was in the field. I was in my chair. There were two chairs intact. I was sort of on my side, and the man in the other chair was over my shoulder.

“When I went to move him, I realized he was too light--that all of him wasn’t there anymore . . . So I tried to cover as best as I could, with part of the seat. . . . The fog and the snow were so bad, I couldn’t see the lights to the runway.” Then he heard and found the blonde girl, and together they saw fire trucks passing. They waved, but no one stopped. “When I saw them go by, I wondered again if I was really dead,” he said.

Finally, they made their way back to the wreckage and pounded on the window of a rescue Jeep. Other survivors were emerging from the debris. Self opened the Jeep door and “just began pushing people inside. We needed to get warm.” Those who had escaped serious injury were moved to a bus, where Self was relieved to see Mike Spicer, one of the other Permagreen conventioneers.

The other four didn’t make it.

On Wednesday, Doug Self’s wife and his parents and his brothers and sister and aunt were loading up two cars for the trip home. It will be a long one. The drive to Kennewick will take at least 14 hours, and along the way, Doug Self still plans to stop in Boise.

He has friends to bury there.