Plane Crash In Idaho VIDEO

Plane Crash In Idaho VIDEO - The four lucky survivors of a single-engine plane crash in central Idaho can prove just how close they came to death, with a seven-minute video documenting their harrowing ordeal, including the bloody aftermath.

Nathan Williams was filming June 30 when the small plane took off from a dirt runway at Bruce Meadows Airport in Stanley headed toward the mountain resort town of McCall. His video shows the plane flying for several minutes before losing altitude and slamming into the trees below, with the pilot suffering serious injuries.

The video has drawn national attention after being posted online this week.

‘It wasn't anything we were trying to film,’ said Williams, 38, of Boise. ‘It was a beautiful day and we were just really having fun recording what we were doing.’

Williams suffered a concussion in the plane crash and said the pilot, Leslie Gropp, 70, a retired 31-year veteran of the Idaho Army National Guard, suffered a broken jaw, broken ribs and a fractured cheekbone, according to Yahoo! News. The two other passengers, Alec Arhets and Gropp's son, Tol, escaped with cuts and bruises, Williams said.

‘We all went back to work on Monday,’ said Williams, a dentist. ‘Les was really the only one who had some lasting damage, but even he's going to be fine.’

The Valley County Sheriff's Department said at the time that the crash occurred late in the afternoon in the Bear Valley area and two people were transported to a hospital.

As of late Thursday, the video of the plane crash had more than 336,000 views and been played more than 1.2 million times on the website LiveLeak, where it was shared a day ago. The video also spread on YouTube and in one instance, was removed from a user's page because it violated the company's policy ‘on shocking and disgusting content.’

The group flew into the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness so they could go on a hiking trip, Williams said. After the hike, they were headed to McCall for dinner and while taking off, Williams is shown smiling as he pans his camera to the back of the plane to his fellow passengers.

After about 2 minutes and 40 seconds of footage, the video shows the 1947 Stinson 108 four-seater flying at only 60 or 70 feet start to lower and then crash. The camera is then blocked by the wreckage and shows a mostly black screen as one of the men is heard moaning and another asks: ‘Everybody OK?’

‘It happened so fast, that I remember hitting the trees, and it sounded like rapid fire. Gunfire, it sounded like, but then we were all upside down, seatbelted in, and you can hear in the video my dad asking if everyone is all right,’ Tol Gropp told KBOI-TV.

Several minutes later, one of the men is shown retrieving the camera, which films the pilot lying on the ground with his head resting on a log and his face and arm covered in blood. His eye appears blackened and the wreckage of the red plane is in the background.

At that point, the group had already attended to Gropp and were waiting for help, said Williams, who is shown leaning down to talk to the pilot.

‘Where are you hurt?’ Williams asks. ‘The right side of your face? OK.’

Two campers who witnessed the crash rushed to the scene and alerted authorities, according to the Idaho Statesman. Firefighters battling wildfires in the area had to cut down several trees so a helicopter could land and airlift the pilot to the hospital.

The survivors of the crash suspect the plane had a difficult time gaining altitude because of warming temperatures and that after the Stinson took off, it hit an air pocket that made it rapidly loose altitude, pushing it down into the trees.

The entire episode was caught by two GoPro cameras that were rolling inside the cockpit at the time of the take-off and crash. Williams posted the video to show friends and family what happened and he was surprised to see the video elicit so much response.

But he also understands why people are intrigued.

‘You see how fast something happens, something that's life-threatening,’ he said. ‘That's kind of people's worst fears and it kind of came true for us, in a way.’

The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the accident, has taken the plane to a secured storage facility for further examination.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2186372/Amazing-cockpit-video-captures-crash-small-1947-plane-Idaho-mountains-survivors-point-view.html#ixzz23HehVZIy