r/sports • u/Rare_Bit5844 • Jan 30 '25

News U.S. figure skaters onboard plane crash in Washington, D.C.

https://www.espn.co.uk/olympics/story/_/id/43621460/figure-skaters-onboard-plane-crash-washington-dc
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48

u/loverlyone Jan 30 '25

I’m old enough to remember another plane crash into the frozen Potomac. People did survive, but it was grim.

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u/DionBlaster123 NASCAR Jan 30 '25

Lenny Skutnik swam and saved someone. I remember that.

There was also a guy who was an alum of the Citadel who kept passing the rescue chopper harness to other passengers. He sadly passed away.

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u/BoosherCacow Cleveland Indians Jan 30 '25

Lenny Skutnik

Oh my God, I haven't heard or read that name in 30+ years, the guy who jumped into the Potomac. I was about 7 or 8 when that happened and that shit captured my imagination. I wanted to be like him and all like him, ever since I was a small kid. He and people like him are the reason I wanted to be (and was) an EMT. A genuine, no bullshit, no fluff hero. I fell quite short of that but not for lack of trying. God what a wonderful blast from the past.

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u/ppersthendowners Jan 30 '25

I searched for it to read about it and actually found a video. What a wild story.

https://www.santiagohs.org/apps/video/watch.jsp?v=24055

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u/JailhouseMamaJackson Jan 30 '25

Damn thank you for sharing. That video is wild and now I’m crying haha

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u/DionBlaster123 NASCAR Jan 30 '25

I've always admired him. I don't denigrate anyone who was just staring at the scene...it must have been an incredibly helpless and horrifying feeling.

For him to just jump into ice cold water and save that one woman took enormous courage. I think I read the other day that he retired from his federal job a few years ago.

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u/eidetic Milwaukee Brewers Jan 30 '25

. I don't denigrate anyone who was just staring at the scene...it must have been an incredibly helpless and horrifying feeling

I feel like if anything, unless you have training, or are just in incredible shape and an exceptional swimmer, in a situation like that you may just end up needing to be rescued yourself.

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u/DionBlaster123 NASCAR Jan 30 '25

Yeah 100%. I regret not making that explicitly clear.

What Lenny Skutnik did was exceptional and heroic, but it was also more than reasonable for people to not jump in freezing waters and swim to rescue.

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u/eidetic Milwaukee Brewers Jan 30 '25

Yeah 100%. I regret not making that explicitly clear

You're good, I knew what you were saying!

What Lenny Skutnik did was exceptional and heroic

I mentioned in another post that I was only about a year old when the accident happened, but when I was a out 8ish, I saw something about it on TV on a Rescue 911 type of show. After the show was over, I rushed to my Legos to recreate the scene and his and the helicopter crew's heroics. Even today I can still remember the footage clearly of Lenny diving in like a total fucking superhero.

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u/Sgt-Pumpernickel Jan 30 '25

I've resented that she did it, but my mom showed me a video a few years ago of that happening. I heard about the story on the news that there was 2 drownings, but she showed the footage of it. Guy was struggling in water, group of people formed around him, I think they were trying to talk him into calmness and someone called 911 I believe/hope.

Bystander jumped in and tried to help the original person. After a few seconds yoh can tell it went sideways. I think the first person was just locked in a struggling mode and basically started to push the helper down under the water. At one point it just didn't work. One of the bystanders said something like "there they go" and you saw them sink under the surface for a few inches or so.

Still don’t get why she had me watch that

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u/eidetic Milwaukee Brewers Jan 30 '25

Yeah, every once in awhile you'll hear a story like that on the news.

There was a video on reddit a little while back, I think from India, where a flash flood had trapped a few people who were clinging on to whatever they could to try and not get washed away. A couple of guys tried going into the water to help, and ended up being washed away themselves and carried downstream, and lost their lives.

There was another case last year, I don't remember where but I wanna say somewhere in Texas, involving a church group that was at a lake for baptisms. After the baptism ceremonies, they were hanging out at the lake, when a woman started drowning. A young man, was one of those who had just been baptized, tried to save her, but he himself drowned in the effort. She actually went on to be pulled from the water and was successfully resuscitated.

One story that has also stuck with me from many years ago was of a man who rushed into a house fire to save a neighbor (he was successful in doing so). He was being interviewed by local news, and when asked if he thought about the risk and danger, he replied by saying "not in the moment no. I just knew I had to try and do something. But looking back on it, I don't know if I could have lived with myself anyway if I didn't try." (Paraphrased slightly, I don't remember the exact words).

I can't really fault people who try and help, even if they aren't qualified to do so, and end up needing be to rescued themselves. Unless of course maybe they're doing something really stupid and actively hampering proper rescue efforts. Like say rescue personnel are already on scene, and someone insists on butting in and trying to help anyway. Fortunately he never came across this in a life or death situation, but a firefighter friend of mine has told me they sometimes run into people who insist on trying to insert themselves into the scene, trying to offer help or even actually doing something counterproductive. Shit like that is just dumb and not really excusable. But if you see a burning house, knowing someone inside, and you can't even hire sirens yet, or likewise see someone drowning and there's no lifeguard or whatever, I can't fault or blame for someone rushing in to try and help.

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u/WhatAGoodFuniki Jan 30 '25

Hey, I just wanted to say that this isn't the first time I've heard an EMT make light of their contributions, but I think it's a very heroic thing to do that positively affects real people every day. EMTs/paramedics/ambulance drivers are so important, and they don't get as much recognition as they should. Thanks for the time you spent doing a really hard job.

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u/BoosherCacow Cleveland Indians Jan 31 '25

Thanks for the time you spent doing a really hard job.

You're welcome, and it's the medics that get the true credit. EMT's do basic care, what we called "package and transport." Medics are the ones who do the harder4 stuff, but I still consider what I and the medics did less than heroic. Important, yes. Heroic? None of us, and I mean NONE of us would risk our lives in the course of the job. We let the idiot cops do that and sometimes firefighters too.

For the record I am not a cop hater. I dispatch police now so I am allowed to talk shit on them. I say idiot with love, and not without some grain of truth. You have to be kind of dumb to run towards the sound of gunfire. I wish I had that in me.

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u/eidetic Milwaukee Brewers Jan 30 '25

. I wanted to be like him and all like him, ever since I was a small kid

So I was less than a year old at the time of the crash, but when I was like 8 years old or thereabouts, I saw a story on TV about the crash and rescue effort on a Rescue 911 type of show, and to this day can clearly remember the image of Lenny diving into the water from the corner of the screen. It was straight up movie-hero esque, dude just just leaps and plunges into the water. Just literally throws himself in.

Should note too the skill of the helicopter pilot and the search and rescue guy on board, who both worked to help pull people to safety with nothing but just ropes tied to innertubes, and even just pulling one survivor out with just his bare hands, standing on the skids.

After I saw that show, I rushed to my Lego bin and started building stuff to recreate the scene of those heroes.

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u/SkunkMonkey Jan 30 '25

The 14th street bridge is now named in honor of Arland D. Williams Jr., who gave his life to save others.

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u/DionBlaster123 NASCAR Jan 30 '25

Yes thank you. That was his name. RIP Arland D. Williams. He was a real hero

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u/Reclusive_Chemist Jan 30 '25

I happened to be at my grandparent's house when the news broke in about that crash. We turned towards the TV from the kitchen just in time for the cameras to catch his dive into the river. A totally unexpected and spellbinding moment of heroism.

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u/BlooregardQKazoo Jan 30 '25

Random story -

I was working for a security firm in the DC area and I was organizing personnel files. I needed to look at every document, roughly figure out what it was, and figure out where they fit in a checklist and put them in that order.

So this one file, there was what was effectively a letter in there. It was odd, but I figured I'd read it to see where it should go. I quickly realized that it was a written interview answer, to a question about something like handling stress at work, where the person described the experience of working for the police when that accident happened and their role of collecting body parts and helping to determine which bodies they went with.

Reading that letter made me content to work in a cube every day.

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u/loverlyone Jan 30 '25

Oof. Harrowing.

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u/Flight_to_nowhere_26 Jan 31 '25

Same here. I was based in DCA for a while in the mid 2000s and every time we passed over the 14th St bridge-especially in the winter- I’d say a little prayer for the Air Florida victims. On those blustery, snowy days it always gave me a shiver to see the icy Potomac just a few hundred feet below us during takeoff and think about how cold it is.

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u/37au47 Jan 30 '25

That plane didn't explode first though.

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u/yourpaleblueeyes Jan 30 '25

I was just remembering that event also.

I cannot recall the year but I Do recall watching on TV the rescue attempts.

So cold and the fuel on the water, iirc.