Utah man calls his survival a miracle

As Bountiful resident Dan Liljenquist came to after briefly being knocked out, he realized the front of the plane that he and 13 others were in — which had just crashed in Guatemala during an emergency landing — was on fire.

"When I woke up, I just kept saying, 'I'm alive. I'm alive.' And when the plane started on fire, I kept chanting, 'Not today,"' said Liljenquist.

Liljenquist, a state Senate candidate, was one of three survivors from the plane that crashed earlier this week while on a humanitarian effort in Guatemala. Eleven others, including three Utahns, were killed.

Speaking to the Deseret News on the phone from his hospital bed in Guatemala City, Liljenquist recounted the tragic accident and his own miraculous story of survival.

Contrary to other reports given primarily by witnesses and those receiving information second-hand, Liljenquist said it was important for the families of the victims to know that 10 of the passengers were killed instantly and did not suffer. Those people died on impact and were not killed by the subsequent fire and explosion, he said.

Liljenquist was sitting in the rear of the plane next to his good friend John Carter and Javier Rabanales, the Guatemalan director of CHOICE Humanitarian. Carter and Liljenquist were part of the group Focus Services.

The group was flying to Alta Verapez to help build a classroom in the village of Sepamac. About 45 minutes into the flight, Liljenquist noticed the first sign of trouble.

"I noticed the pilot started to flip switches and move very quickly. Then we could smell burning oil. And then, after that, the engine just stopped," he said. "It was kind of surreal. We just stopped. We went from the noise of the plane to just the noise of the wind on the wings. It was surreal."

The plane was still 10,000 to 15,000 feet off the ground at that point, Liljenquist said.

"The pilot panicked a little bit, told us to put our seat belts on and we'd need to make a crash landing," he said.

The area they were over at that time, however, was hilly with lots of trees.

As the plane descended, everyone on board remained quiet and calm. At one point, one of the passengers commented calmly, "If it's our time to go, it's our time to go," Liljenquist said.

It wasn't until they were almost ready to hit the ground that one of the other passengers, one of the survivors, panicked and started yelling, "Oh God, oh God" and began praying out loud.

The last thing Liljenquist remembers was being about 20 feet from the ground, when the wing of the plane clipped a tree, and then he was briefly knocked out as the emergency landing ended in a violent crash.

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