Two Thought Dead In Montana Mishap Walk Out Of The Woods

When Flathead County (MT) Sheriff Jim Dupont saw the crash scene, he figured no one could have gotten out alive. A Cessna 206 had gone down in rough weather not far from the town of Kalispell. On board were the pilot and four Forest Service workers. Dupont called a news conference and said all five aboard had been killed.

So, imagine his surprise when Jodee Hogg, 23, of Billings (MT), and Matthew Ramige, 29, of Jackson Hole (WY), walked out of the woods and along a highway 48 hours later.

"It's just an unbelievable miracle," said Dupont. On Tuesday, he had announced all five people on board the Cessna died in the crash. "You look at that crash site, that wreckage, you'd never believe anyone could have survived."

The 206, chartered by the Forest Service, was last heard from about 15 minutes after it took off near the Glacier National Park. On board were Hogg, Ramige, pilot Jim Long, 60, of Kalispell; Davita Bryant, 32, a Forest Service worker from Whitefish (MT); and Ken Good, 58, a Flathead forest employee also from Whitefish.

Bow hunters reported hearing a low-flying aircraft's engine suddenly stopped. A work crew later spotted what looked like wreckage above the treeline on a mountain in the Flathead Range.

SAR teams were choppered into the site Tuesday afternoon. They found a grisly scene.

"That airplane went from more than 100 miles per hour to zero in less than 40 feet," Dupont said. "Who can survive that?"

Dupont called the post-crash fire "an unbelievably hot fire that literally melted everything.... The entire fuselage was gone. "The bottom of the aircraft actually melted away. You could look right in. It was melted to nothing."

In fact, the fire was so intense that, while the recovery team could tell there were human remains inside the wreckage, they couldn't identify any individual.

"We were looking for bone fragments and teeth," Dupont told the Missoula Missoulian newspaper. "We had a lot of very experienced people up there, and no one even remotely imagined survivors."

Wednesday afternoon, Dupont was sifting through the rubble at the crash site when his helicopter support truck passed by a couple of people on the side of the road.

"They're just driving down the road," Dupont said, "and here's these two people standing there. They looked pretty raggedy, so they stopped and asked if they needed help. And they say, 'Yeah. We were in a plane crash.'"

How Hogg and Ramige survived is still a mystery to Dupont. As far as he knows, they simply extricated themselves from the smoldering wreckage and walked into the woods.

"I've been at this a whole lot of years," Dupont told the Missoulian, "and I can honestly say I've never seen anything like it. It's as close to a miracle as it gets."

Family members of the two young survivors agreed wholeheartedly. "You can't believe the elation," said Jim Hogg, Jodee's father.

Jodee was hospitalized in stable condition. Ramige, however, was being treated in an intensive care unit, in serious condition. His mother, Dr. Wendy Becker, visited her son at the hospital, where he was taken for burns.

"I still can't believe it. I can see that he's alive now," she told KOMO-TV in a report posted on its Web site Thursday.

"Can you imagine these families?" asked Bob Bryant, father-in-law of victim Davita Bryant, who died in the accident. "They've been told their kids are dead. And now they are resurrected."

FMI: www.fs.fed.us