Son: "He's Looking Really Good For How Bad The Accident Was"

To be honest, no one really expected 54-year old Paul Herr to survive. He'd been missing for two days after his Piper Warrior disappeared from radar on a flight from Jackson Hole, WY, to Pasco, WA.

But Herr surprised everyone. And now he'll live to tell about it.

"He tried to walk, he tried to crawl out, but he couldn't get much of anywhere," Herr's wife, Christine, told the Associated Press Thursday. "He has cuts on his face, but he looks great to me."

Herr suffered a broken vertebra and shattered jaw when his PA-28's (file photo of type, below) engine quit and the aircraft ended up in a canyon about 20 miles east of Kooskia, ID on Monday. Earlier reports that he'd been found hanging from his seat by his safety harness have now been discounted. That certainly doesn't mean, however, that Herr's ordeal was a walk in the park.

Poor weather prevented an airborne search on Tuesday. It wasn't until Wednesday that state and federal officials were able to pinpoint the crash site.

"We picked up a faint ELT (emergency locater transmitter) signal on top of the ridge, and we just kept messing around, flying above that spot until the signal got stronger," Neal Johnson, a North Idaho Backcountry Medical Rescue Team of Orofino told the AP. "We flew directly over ... several times, but there was no indication a plane had gone down."

But one of the airborne searchers finally spotted a three-foot long piece of metal stuck in a tree -- debris from the crash -- and the ground search was on.

But it was a search for remains, not a search for a survivor, Johnson said.

"We took nominal gear because we assumed we were going to find a body," he said. "But when we hiked to the plane, there was nobody inside. We found him about 100 or 150 feet below, near the creek."

Johnson said Herr suffered from hypothermia as well as his injuries -- but was up and moving about, communicative and clear-headed.

Herr is expected to remain hospitalized for another week.

"We're doing really good. We're extremely ecstatic," the son said in a telephone interview. "He's looking really good for how bad the accident was."

FAA Preliminary Accident Report

IDENTIFICATION
  Regis#: 8805W        Make/Model: PA28      Description: PA-28 CHEROKEE, ARROW, WARRIOR, ACHER, D
  Date: 05/09/2005     Time: 2337

  Event Type: Accident   Highest Injury: Serious     Mid Air: N    Missing: N
  Damage: Unknown

LOCATION
  City: LOWELL   State: ID   Country: US

DESCRIPTION
  ACFT CRASHED UNDER UNKNOWN CIRCUMSTANCES, AN ALERT NOTICE WAS ISSUED AND
  THE ACFT WAS LOCATED IN THE BACKCOUNTRY NEAR KOOSHIA, NEAR LOWELL, ID

INJURY DATA      Total Fatal:   0
                 # Crew:   1    Fat:   0     Ser:   1     Min:   0     Unk:   
                 # Pass:    0    Fat:   0     Ser:   0     Min:   0     Unk:   
                 # Grnd:          Fat:   0     Ser:   0     Min:   0     Unk:   

WEATHER: UNK

OTHER DATA

  Departed: JACKSON, WY                 Dep Date:    Dep. Time:     
  Destination: PASCO, WA                Flt Plan: IFR          Wx Briefing: 
  Last Radio Cont: 
  Last Clearance: 

  FAA FSDO: SPOKANE, WA  (NM13)                   Entry date: 05/12/2005

FMI: www.ntsb.gov