Crash and Rescue
On August 13, 1993 Don and a group of six other missionaries were coming home from a mission trip to Russia. They were on a small twin engine plane over the Bering Sea near Nome, Alaska when the engines gave out. They floated in the 36 degree water over 3 to 6 foot waves for 35–70 minutes before being rescued by helicopter. The rescue crew brought 7 body bags because no one had ever survived more than 15 minutes in that water. The last person was rescued after 70 minutes of being in the water and every single one of the group survived. Don and his group are noted for being the only survivors of a plane crash into the Bering Sea and the only survivors of water temperatures that cold. Don now tells this story when he visits different churches and groups around the country.
Read more about this topic: Don Wharton
Famous quotes containing the words crash and/or rescue:
“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“The individual woman is required ... a thousand times a day to choose either to accept her appointed role and thereby rescue her good disposition out of the wreckage of her self-respect, or else follow an independent line of behavior and rescue her self-respect out of the wreckage of her good disposition.”
—Jeannette Rankin (1880–1973)