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LoginWhen a small aircraft pilot flies, he or she has to be prepared for the worst — a crash landing and survival on the ground for at least 24 to 48 hours before rescuers find the wrecked craft, a Topeka physician will tell pilots Tuesday.
"When I go to Colorado, I plan to be able to survive at least a week pretty well," said Eric A. Voth, an internal medicine physician with the Cotton-O'Neil Clinic.
Voth will speak to pilots at 7 p.m. Tuesday during a meeting at the Lawrence Airport Terminal, 2500 Airport Road, in Lawrence.
The sponsor of the meeting is the Federal Aviation Administration safety program. There is no charge, but call (785) 842-0000 to check the availability of seats.
Voth will talk about how to build a survival kit to improve the odds of staying alive if the craft goes down, including in cold temperatures.
Voth, 54, has hiked, camped and climbed since he was 10 and has intensively studied survival techniques for 30 years.
He uses a family hike in Colorado as an example of why good survival planning is necessary. He recalls vividly the hike when his father, Harold, became dangerously hypothermic, a condition in which the victim's body temperature drops.
Voth, his father, wife, 16-year-old son and two brothers were hiking Mount Massive, a 14,421-foot peak near Leadville, Colo., in 1997 when the weather went sour. It rained torentially, winds blew 20 to 40 mph, and visibility was reduced to 10 to 20 feet, all while the group tried to work their way down to their base camp above tree-line.
They had done the hike 10 or 11 times previously but took it for granted and didn't plan for it, he said. They didn't have a GPS device, adequate clothing or even a functional compass.
"That's how cavalier we were in our planning," Voth said.
Harold Voth, an in-shape, rugged 75-year-old, was shivering, disoriented and would walk off if someone didn't keep a hand on him, Voth said. In 13 hours of hiking, the group searched for their camp for seven hours before a 20- to 30-second gap in the clouds allowed them to spot it, then get to it. They got Voth's father into a sleeping bag and gave him warm food and drinks, Voth said.
"All of us were extremely cold," Voth said. "It we had ended up with an overnight situation, there is a reasonable chance that my father would have died from it. Thus, the value of planning."
If a plane's engine quits while over Kansas, a pilot is fortunate because much of the state has open fields and a lot of places to land, he said. But Voth will steel his audience to the idea there is a "better than even chance that somebody won't live" in a crash landing and to be prepared for that, and that someone might be burned or severely injured if a fire starts or there is a collision.
After landing, get out and get away from the aircraft because of the chance of fire, he said, then take account of your survival equipment, any injuries to be cared for and try to communicate. Voth carries a hand-held GPS system that sends a signal to the satellite rescue system (SARSAT), which will send out rescue teams. A similar system is built into the plane.
The downed pilot also needs to figure whether to build a shelter or use the plane as shelter, to stay warm, and to get water and food.
"A well-prepared survival kit can help you tremendously in making those things easier," Voth said.
When flying over remote or rugged terrain, Voth adds a collapsible Browning .22-caliber rifle to the survival kit. The semiautomatic would be used to shoot small game if necessary.