Washington Man Thrown From Plane Into Field of Snow : For Denver Crash Survivor, It Was Nightmare in White

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 the man 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 followed the cries until he reached a hysterical blond 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 instantly 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 Wednesday to talk about his ordeal and--with his family hovering protectively around him--to talk about life, about going home.

Self’s journey began Sunday in Texas, where he and five buddies had spent the weekend at the convention of the National Lawn Care Assn. The men all worked for Permagreen Lawn Care; Doug managed an outlet in Kennewick and the others were company executives in Boise, Ida.

After the convention, Self decided to accompany his co-workers to Boise, then drive the rest of the way home.

In San Antonio, mechanical trouble delayed their United Airlines flight for three hours, and the men eventually learned that a missed connection would mean another 5 1/2-hour wait in Denver.

But once they landed at Denver’s Stapleton Airport, United found them six seats on Continental’s Flight 1713, and told them they could just make it if they got across the airport in 10 minutes.

Assigned Same Seat

The run proved unnecessary. Denver’s first major snowstorm of the season was creating havoc, and Flight 1713 was also delayed. Once on board, Doug and his friend Mike Spicer discovered they both had seat 7E.

“Mike and I argued over who would get it, and he ended up way in the back of the plane,” Self said. It wasn’t much of a victory at the time--7E was in the middle, anyway.

From his seat, Self could see that the DC 9-10 was being de-iced, and watched some of the hot orange fluid seep through the closed cabin door. The plane started to move, and he closed his eyes. The drive from Boise to Kennewick would take more than five hours, and Self figured he’d better sleep.

Nearly an hour passed between the time the Permagreen executives boarded and the time Flight 1713 took off. Self dozed. His eyes were closed when the plane began to lift off the ground. Suddenly, it wobbled, and one of the wings hit the ground. Jolted awake, Self felt the plane tilt violently to the other side, and hit again.

“I knew we were going down,” he said. “I tightened my seat belt and put my head between my legs. People were screaming and saying things like, ‘Oh my God, this can’t be happening!’

“I knew I was going to die.”

Self saw the plane start to split open. “The metal was starting to tear apart. I thought about a crash in Reno where some kid survived because he was thrown from the plane still in his seat.

“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. He was pretty torn up. Dead. So I tried to cover him as best as I could, with part of the seat.

“Then I took off running. But the fog and the snow were so bad, I couldn’t see the lights to the runway. Then I heard a sound and saw a blond girl about 13 or 14 years old. I just tried to keep her calm. She kept asking: ‘Where are we?’ ”

Together, they saw fire trucks heading toward the twisted heap of steel that had been Flight 1713. Self and the girl waved, but no one stopped. “When I saw them go by, I wondered again if I was really dead,” he said.

Emerging From the Debris

Finally, the pair made their way back to the wreckage and pounded on the window of a rescue Jeep, where the driver was urgently calling by radio with word of the crash. Other survivors, stunned and shivering, were emerging from the debris.

Self opened the Jeep door and “just began pushing people inside. We needed to get warm. Survivors who had escaped serious injury were moved to a bus, where Self was relieved to see Spicer, his fellow conventioneer who had taken the seat in the back.

The other four didn’t make it.

On Wednesday, Self’s wife, his parents, brothers, a sister and an aunt were loading up two cars for the trip home.

A friend had lent the family a van and they made a special bed in the back for Doug, whose chest was still sore from a heavy blow that bruised his heart. The stitches on his nose and legs were still uncomfortable.

The journey home will be a long one. The drive to Kennewick will take about 14 hours--more if the weather is bad--and along the way, Self still plans to stop in Boise.

He has friends to bury there.