WASHINGTON COUNTY, Ga. — Washington County Sheriff Joel Cochran says it's a miracle two men survived a plane crash Tuesday morning.
He says 67-year-old pilot Daniel Mesnard from Florida and 69-year-old passenger Timothy Fisher from Ohio have critical injuries and are in the hospital.
Kaolin Field Airport manager Ray Lawrence told us that the pilot was flying home from an aviation event in Wisconsin and stopped to refuel.
Lawrence says he filmed the plane taking off, but he did not know the plane would come down just 15 minutes later.
Cochran says they got a call around 9:30 a.m. saying the plane crashed a half mile from the sheriff's office.
“Public works employees were in the area," Cochran said. "They heard a loud crash and then they heard people yelling for help."
Sgt. Deputy Keith Thompson says he was first on the scene. He says the marsh used to be a pond he visited as a child that's since been drained and closed.
“There was not any water — it was just really mushy,” Thompson said. “When I stepped off, it came up to about my waist. So, I had to crawl on my knees to get to them."
Mesnard and Fisher had been ejected from the plane. Thompson says they were injured but alert.
“The plane was totally destroyed," he said. "The front part had come off. The pilot told me that once they took off about a quarter of a mile from here at Kaolin Air Field, that they had engine trouble and they were trying to get back and they just couldn't make it."
Thompson says crews came together to get the men out.
“It was relieving that they were talking to me and we got them out of there as quickly as possible,” he says.
Cochran said they were on the lucky side today.
“It's a miracle that either one of the two that was on that flight are still alive, so I think God was with them during this ordeal,” he says.
Cochran says the Federal Aviation Administration will investigate the crash.
He says both men were flown to Level 1 trauma centers. One of them was taken to a hospital in Augusta and the other was taken to Macon.
Lawrence says this is the fifth plane crash in the county with the first and only fatal plane crash happening in 1970.