Flight 401 - First Response

After some minutes, Robert Marquis (local resident in the Everglades that was night frogging and became the first man on the scene that night) noticed a helicopter in the sky. It was obviously searching for the crash, but it was sweeping the wrong area. He slogged back to his airboat, got his helmet light and began swinging it around.

Coast Guard helicopter 1376 saw the faint light flashing in the distance. The helicopter swooped down toward the light. As the wreckage came into sight, someone in the helicopter said "Oh, my God." Pell saw bodies, a few hands waving slowly in the grass and one distinguishable piece of airplane wreckage; the tail. "How did anyone live through this," Pell thought. The copter made one full sweep of the area and then climbed back to 300 feet to establish radio contact. Pell called the air station, "We've got one hell of a mess out here."

Another Coast Guard helicopter noted the difficulty in finding a place to land at the crash site. "Everywhere we tried to land there were bodies," said Lt. Bill Hodges."

Pell landed his helicopter and took on survivors, three men and a woman. The helicopter took off into the night sky with the first victims - four of the one hundred and seventy six who would be transported from the scene dead or alive. The time was 12:46, one hour and four minutes after the crash.