Focus on miracle, not mistake
It was almost too much to absorb when two of five people survived a fatal plane crash last week in the Flathead, walking raggedly out of the woods a day after the wreck was called unsurvivable.
It is a reminder of how things large and small link themselves in unforeseen ways to construct unexpected outcomes. From one tragedy was born the most unimaginable joy for two families. And from that came questions that are natural for people to ask.
When officials surveyed the wreckage of the Cessna 206, they believed no one survived the crash and ensuing inferno.
The apparition of Matthew Ramige, now 30, and Jodee Hogg, 23, at the side of U.S. 2 on Sept. 22 made people ask, how had they been overlooked? What if they hadn't saved themselves?
And there was, sadly an element of "Aha!" for some, who found some satisfaction in answering those questions harshly.
It has apparently become somewhat of a national pastime to revel in the mistakes, miseries, and malfeasance of others. Take that, Dan Rather. Guess you're not invincible, huh, Kobe Bryant?
The fact is, skilled and experienced officials made a mistake when they told Ramige's and Hogg's families that no one survived the crash. As we saw, that kind of mistake makes national news.
We saw Sheriff Jim Dupont explaining it on network news. He stood firmly behind Undersheriff Chuck Curry's assessment of the scene. Why wouldn't he? Curry is a seasoned professional, both as a coroner and paramedic, who has rescued more people than we can count.
Dupont himself was at the crash scene the next day when Ramige and Hogg were seen along the highway. At first, he thought the report was a hoax. Then he called it a miracle.
One of the reasons that people were confounded that officials couldn't tell there were three victims instead of five is Dupont's sensitivity in releasing grisly details about the melted remains of an airplane fire like none he's seen before.
That left people imagining that officials were sloppy or incapable of counting, as if the wreckage was something like a car crash in which bodies could simply be counted.
Dupont protected grieving families but left himself open to criticism by not being blunt; rescuers were literally sifting through ashes from a fire that burned hot enough to consume tooth and bone.
The truth is, the mistake visited horrible grief upon Ramige and Hogg's families and caused the two to rely on themselves to get help. Fortunately, though, it cost no one their lives.
There's nothing wrong with taking a critical look at the event. With the exception of medicine, law enforcement may be the only profession in which decisions, sometimes necessarily made in haste, are scrutinized leisurely and legally for years afterwards. Men and women in those fields know those terms before they take their first jobs.
"We've gone over that thing every which way we can," said Dupont. More than a week later, he still doesn't see how there could have been any other conclusion, based on what was left of the plane and its contents.
And so we look to survivor Jodee Hogg, who has earned our respect with her heroism at the scene, her heart in saving herself and Ramige, and her humility in wanting to "close the book" on the crash.
She says she plans to move on with her life past that mistake on Mount Liebig. So must we, and we continue to be grateful to the searchers and rescuers who put others first, and do whatever they can to help in an emergency.