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Smoking, I’m posting the text FOR THE RECORD. Moderator, if it’s not acceptable to do so, please feel free to delete.

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In his recently released book, Bruce Briley says Health Director Loretta Fuddy ‘died in my arms’

April 17, 2016
By CHRIS SUGIDONO - Staff Writer (csugidono@mauinews.com) , The Maui News
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Bruce Briley feared the worst when an unconscious woman resembling his wife was placed beside him inside a helicopter that had just rescued him from a plane crash off Molokai’s Kalaupapa peninsula more than two years ago.

“I spread the hair off her face, and it was not my wife,” Briley told The Maui News Thursday. “It turned out to be Loretta Fuddy.”

Briley was one of eight passengers and one pilot who crashed a half mile off Molokai on the night of Dec. 11, 2013. It made national headlines after Fuddy, the director of the state Department of Health, died in the crash. Fuddy had been the Health Department director who verified and approved the release of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

“I knew she didn’t go down in the plane,” Briley said. “I believe she died in my arms because, although the water was chilly, her face was warm.”

The 79-year-old Illinois resident recently released a book recounting his experience. The book is titled “On a Wing and a Prayer: A True Story by A Survivor of a Tragic Crash in the Pacific Ocean.” Briley and his wife, Marilyn, were the two most seriously injured survivors of the crash.

The book is available online at Amazon.com.

“I’m not the same person, nor is my wife. It was a life-changing experience,” Briley said.

The couple were enjoying their first full day in the islands before they boarded Makani Kai’s Cessna Caravan aircraft. Briley was doing research for a historical fiction book he was writing on a royal family member contracting leprosy.

“We spent a rather interesting day touring the colony, and we were returning to Oahu with basically the same or identical aircraft we arrived in,” Briley said. “The takeoff appeared normal, and we were climbing at a rapid rate, but around 1,000 or 1,500 feet altitude the engine blew up and suddenly we were without power.”

The National Transportation Safety Board has not released a full report on the crash, but Briley was told by a lawyer involved in the case that one of the blades in the engine “tore loose.” He said the completion of the report has been stalled several times due to the retirement of the assigned investigator and larger aircraft crashes in recent years.

“We heard a very loud bang, and it was clear nothing was pushing us up anymore, so then we started down,” Briley said. “There was not any panic, per se, which I thought was incredibly calm for a group of people. On one hand, you’re in a state of shock, but for Hawaiians as a class - they are a little more calm compared to us normal mortals. They took it in stride.”

Briley said the pilot, Clyde Kawasaki, banked to the side and kept air speed up to prevent the plane from stalling.

“If it had stalled, we would’ve dropped like a rock and perished,” Briley said. “He was the last one out, and his face was covered in blood.”

Briley and his wife were sitting in the front row behind Kawasaki when the plane hit the water. He said the crash felt like a “baseball bat hitting you in the chops.”

“We both bashed our faces into the front,” he said. “You don’t know if you just woke up or if that just happened. I looked down, and my wife was already on the floor with her face up.”

The seat belt had torn loose from his wife’s body, and seawater was up to her ears as she laid in the aisle. Fuddy was seated behind his wife and also had lost her seat belt, he said.

“She was apparently OK when she exited the plane and was floating for some time,” he said of Fuddy.

Briley said the door to the plane was jammed in the crash, but a passenger managed to kick it open. Kawasaki led the passengers out of the plane after finding any life vests they could put their hands on, he said.

“It dawns on you quickly that a life vest is my life,” he said. “If I don’t find a life vest, I’m going to die. It’s quite a revelation.”

Everyone managed to escape the plane before it quickly sunk with all their luggage into the ocean, Briley said. The crash survivors helped each other put on their life vests, and they were together for about three or four minutes, until strong waves and currents swept through them.

“It was a striking thing how quickly I was right next to my wife and all of a sudden she wasn’t there, and nobody else was either,” he said.

Briley suffered three broken ribs and his eardrums were “destroyed.” His wife fared much worse with five broken ribs, a split sternum and a serious injury to her arm that still bothers her. She also inhaled and swallowed so much water that she was put on an oxygen system for six weeks because she was not oxygenating adequately, and doctors feared she would get pneumonia.

“You’re just a human being trying to survive,” he said. “I’m an old fart, but I’m still pretty active.”

Despite suffering injuries, the couple did not feel all of them at once, Briley said. They did all they could to hold onto their life vests as they drifted apart and farther from shore.

“My wife was praying for the latter part of the time,” he said. “She had given up making any progress with swimming and decided to give herself up to whatever was going to happen.”

Briley attempted to swim to shore and held on to his collapsable cane attached to his belt in case he needed it to beat off a shark attack. He said there were no signs of help aside from a tall lighthouse on the island.

“Molokai, there’s almost nothing there,” he said. “There’s no apparent means to rescuing anybody. No rescue aircrafts or boats.”

After treading water for about two hours and nightfall creeping closer, Briley began to lose hope.

“We had both admittedly hit the moment of despair,” he said. “We were both sure this was going to be it.”

It was then that Briley saw a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter zero in on his location. A rescue basket and diver were dropped on him, and he was lifted out of the water.

“I didn’t really believe it. I thought it was a mirage,” he said.

Briley began asking rescuers about his wife, but no one inside knew where she was. He said he began “shivering so hard it hurt” due to the ocean water and wind from the helicopter.

After some time, the Coast Guard picked up Fuddy and placed her beside Briley. He feared the worst when he noticed her brown hair, which looked identical to his wife’s.

“I can’t explain it,” he said. “I felt awful for her, but I had this good feeling that my wife was still alive somewhere. It was not an experience I would recommend for anyone.”

Briley said Fuddy appeared to be “expired,” but he believed she was still alive. Some survivors believe she had died while waiting to be rescued.

“It was clear that she was unconscious, but her face was warm, which surprised me,” he said. “I thought about that afterwards: did she drown and could I have done something?”

Maui police have said her death was the result of an irregular heartbeat triggered by stress. Her autopsy determined that death was caused by acute cardiac arrhythmia due to hyperventilation.

Briley said he was taken back to Molokai where he was given blankets to warm himself and then rushed to The Queen’s Medical Center on Oahu. He said he waited at the hospital for about an hour before his wife entered to the yells and shouts of joy of doctors and nurses.

“I was very happy to see my wife,” he said. “That was a tremendous relief - while not perfect, she was alive.”

While happy to be alive, the traumatic experience has been difficult on the couple. They suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and have not traveled since the crash.

“Anytime I mention the thing she will often break into tears,” he said.

Briley said the sound of an aircraft sometimes causes an attack, and they have developed a peculiar “fetish” for lighthouses because a lighthouse was their only landmark after the crash. He added that writing the book and talking about it with others have been therapeutic.

“I think you have to beat it to death until it doesn’t bother you too much, otherwise you can dwell on it and have bad dreams,” he said.

The couple still hope to return to Hawaii and Maui and salvage their original vacation. He said they have grown somewhat close to their fellow survivors and reflect on how they were able to escape such a dangerous crash.

“There were a baker’s dozen worth of minor miracles for us to survive,” he said. “You begin to think why were we saved. I don’t expect to be tapped on the shoulder to build an ark, but strange thoughts come to your mind under such circumstances.”

* Chris Sugidono can be reached at csugidono@mauinews.com.