A hero amid fire & wreckage 25-years-ago meets the little boy he saved
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Take a moment to watch the story above about a hero amid the fire and wreckage of the crash landing of United Airlines Flight 232 in Sioux City, Iowa 25-years-ago this coming Saturday (July 19). The story of the severely disabled DC-10 and the ability of pilot Al Haynes and crew to get it on the ground after losing all three hydraulic systems is legendary. The crash killed 111 people but amazingly 185 people survived (the video below has more on the crash).
There are also the lesser known stories like this one involving Denver businessman Bruce Benham and then 2-year-old Aaron Badis. Reporter Jeremy Hubbard does a wonderful job of telling the story as the two men meet for the second time.
Somewhere in the fire ball that was United flight 232, amid the acrid smoke and gnarled metal enveloping the Sioux City runway, Benham and that little boy were suspended upside down, on the cusp of being charred in a scorching 1800 degree fire.
“What do you remember about it? Because everything I’ve heard is kind of second hand, because I was too young to remember anything,” Badis asked Benham during their Skype chat.
“Well, it was real confusing of course, because of all the disaster that happened to the plane and we were upside down and it was smoky and scary. So I let myself out of my seat and I fell to the ceiling since we were upside down. I turned around and I saw you hanging out of your seat, and your mother was gone cause she’d gotten out of her seat and I think people had kind of pushed her. So I just grabbed you from your seatbelt and pulled you into my arms and said, ‘put your arms around my neck, put your head against mine and hold me real tight. We’re gonna get out of here,’”
