Crash survivor finally makes it home, airplane located

Autumn Veatch is finally home in Bellingham after surviving a plane crash in the Cascades.

The 16-year-old was released from Three Rivers Hospital in Brewster last night.

Search crews have also located the crash site of the small airplane, though, due to the rugged conditions of the region, it is unknown how it can be reached.

While Autumn was found in Okanogan County, the crashed airplane was found in nearby Skagit County, which is exactly what Okanogan Sheriff Frank Rogers predicted a day before it was located.

Original story

Rescue crews spent all weekend searching for a downed airplane south of Mount Baker, but found nothing in the Okanogan wilderness.

But then, on Monday afternoon, a voice broke the silence.

“I was riding from Kalispell, Montana to Bellingham Washington and, I don’t know where, but we crashed and I was the only one that made it out,” Autumn told the 9-1-1 dispatcher during a call made from a Mazama, Wash. store.

“The only one that survived,” she added.

Her sudden appearance came as a surprise to searchers.

Captain Jeffery Lustick with the Civil Aviation Patrol calls it noting short of a miracle.

“She went through a lot, and her hiking out was just amazing because it’s steep,” said Okanogan County Sheriff Frank Rogers.

Surviving the crash

Veatch was aboard a small, private airplane with her step-grandparents flying to Lynden, Wash. The plane left western Montana about 4 p.m. Saturday and was due in Lynden around 7 p.m. But it never arrived as scheduled and a search was launched for the aircraft.

The last phone signal from one of the plane’s occupants was detected around 11 p.m. on Saturday in an area near Omak, Washington.

But the plane encountered some cloud cover over the mountains and the pilot was unable to keep visual contact with the terrain. At one point, the clouds disappeared, and the mountain emerged.

“Autumn said, basically, that when they came out of the clouds, they were too low,” Sheriff Rogers said, who has spent time interviewing Autumn since she was found.

“He tried to pull up, grandpa, and he ended up going into the trees,” Rogers said. “She said they came down through trees, hit the ground. As soon as they hit, she said, the plane caught on fire.”

Grandparents, Leland Bowman, 62, and Sharon Bowman, 63, of Marion, Montana, died in the crash.

“She said she was able to get out,” Rogers said. “She tried to get her grandparents out but couldn’t and then she took off. She said, ‘I know they’re dead.'”

Walking out

After waiting one day at the crash site, Autumn decided to walk out. Wearing a loose sweater, jeans, and sneakers, she found a stream and followed it. The stream connected with a river. She spent the night on a sandbar along the river.

The next day she continued to follow the river, and eventually a bridge emerged. That bridge led to the Easy Pass Trail and eventually Highway 20 around mile post 151, according to Sheriff Rogers. Autumn waved down a passing driver, who took her to a store in Mazama.

“It’s incredibly rugged country and it’s fortunate for her that she was close to a major highway. That can make all the difference of surviving something like this and not,” said Rick LeDuc, owner of the Mazama store.

The entire journey out of the wild, Autumn knew people were looking for her.

“She said, ‘I knew they were looking for me, I could see the planes in the air above me circling, high up. I could see planes everywhere, all day long I saw them,'” Sheriff Rogers said.

In the end, the teen suffered minor injuries and dehydration. She remains in a hospital near Mazama, surrounded by her family.

“I have a lot of burns on my hands and I’m kind of covered with bruises and scratches and stuff,” she told the 9-1-1 dispatcher.

“She’s one tough, impressive young lady,”Rogers said. “She wasn’t hysterical. No crying, none of that. Not that monotone either … She’s just strong.”

Once at the Mazama store, Autumn also called her father, David Veatch. Veatch told KING 5 he is not surprised that his daughter was so resourceful.

“She watches a lot of survival shows with me. I can’t get out and do a lot of this stuff anymore, so I watch a lot of it on TV. Survivorman should be very proud of her. I think she did good,” Veatch said.

“She’s just an amazing kid. She’s very gifted. There’s more to her than she knows. I keep trying to tell her that, but she doesn’t believe me. Maybe now she’ll see what I see,” he said.

Aero Methow Rescue Service told KIRO Radio one of its EMTs responded to a teen who walked into a store and said she was the missing girl. She was sent to a hospital. Autumn reportedly was dehydrated and had minor burns.

After news broke that Autumn walked out of the woods Monday afternoon, KIRO Radio’s Ron and Don spoke with local friends of the teenager.

“We never let go,” said family friend Chelsey Clark.

Clark said the area Autumn was found in includes some of the most treacherous terrain in Washington.

The search continues

Sheriff Rogers said that crews continued to search for the missing airplane through Tuesday, but the terrain makes the search a long process.

“We know we are in the right area, from everything she’s told us,” Rogers said.

“The Navy was out quite late last night, searching with their equipment,” he said. “The country is so rugged and the only way to search it is with aircraft. Once they locate it, they will send in ground crews. It’s high, extremely steep. A lot of trees. Extremely thick.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

MyNorthwest.com’s Stephanie Klein and Kipp Robertson contributed to this report.