Supplement (in progress) to the (Brainfartica Arctica) AOPA safety video at https://youtu.be/JDCq1_Tqck4?si=6nfLajK639tTfaDc .

There's also a podcast at https://podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/john-berman/id1240482999?i=1000594112027

Full 20 minute 911 call in mp3 file  ain't EZ listening, but it's real.  (I first listened to it 5 years after the crash, and that was my only complete listen.)  I don't remember the call or anything else after heading for the airport -- after I declared the emergency (after pulling out of the dive and knowing I couldn't maintain altitude) -- and before seeing the 4x4 rescue-lights far away.  Light GA pilots especially: please be really careful about cold weather.  Our Air Force knows: Hypothermia: cold weather killer

Surgical reports excerpts  clinical but details that might make some people queasy.  My hope is to help pilots take cold-weather/hypothermia more seriously than they otherwise might.  Its mental effects alone (low temperature delirium) are a death trap for single pilot operations.  As the immortal car guys said about CO poisoning: you get stoopid, and you don't know you're gettin' stoopid.

Medical imaging -- lots of metal in jbionic; might shock some.  A little shock value helps make a point. Post-trauma survivor's guilt is no picnic, either. Suppressed memories of the impact, and hallucinations from the two-week medical coma leave their imprint.  This is not a "poor me" story, however; I'm beyond "lucky."  It's about pilot safety and recognizing that you're human and therefore susceptible to unawareness of your compromised judgment, from whatever source.  Under such conditions, you don't have "situational awareness" — including awareness of your brain's situation.  So I urge all pilots (not just light GA pilots) to think about this, because if you think you're not susceptible, you're dead wrong.  Take it from a ghost.    

The FAA investigator came to my hospital room soon after I woke up. He said the plane hit on an upslope and stopped about 75 yards from the initial impact. 

Last radar return showed 127 knots (at about 300 ft above ground level), just under 150mph which is ~75 yards/second, coincidentally.  The energy calculation

is the same as the kinematic equation v² = 2ax bc mass was basically unchanged — not that much came off the plane.

.     150mph = 220 ft/s, flying basically horizontally: 1st analysis case: hits a 45deg upslope, as an elastic, "superball" collision — no energy loss, so it bounces straight up 50+ stories. 2nd analysis case: If it loses 80% of its energy, it bounces straight up 10+ stories. 3rd analysis case: some upslope less than 45deg. It stopped 220 ft after it hit, so the 2nd impact had to be before that 220' distance. Some of the energy would make the plane go forward, so it wouldn't bounce as high. I need to find a "crash expert" who can make some expert guess at how much energy might have been lost on the first impact.

Dear Chief Vigil,

You and hundreds of other heroes and miracle workers rescued me and put me back together after my plane crash last Jan 15. I've told many people over the last year that I have hundreds of hands to shake in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. I've planned on visiting on 1/15, and i also have an appointment with the UNM spine team on 1/21. 

Because I have to see the ortho team in Seattle on 1/22 for my ankle (I've got many issues, but I can walk and breathe on my own and play pony games with my 5 year old daughter and can especially appreciate miracles), I'm going to push out my NM visit. But I want to make sure before 1/15 that I let you know that I'm making my way back to NM as soon as I can to say thanks properly. 

Highest of highest regards to everyone there, and I'll be back in touch asap.....johnb

John, I have thought of you many times this past year. I spent this past Christmas with my two kids and my two grandchildren who all live out of State. As you know kids bring an entirely

different perspective on our purpose in life. I am starting my forty eighth year in emergency services. Ironically as a thirteen year old cadet in the New Mexico Wing of the Civil Air Patrol, one of my first

rescues was a downed aircraft. During these forty-eight years, I have been a Paramedic and EMS Educator, a structural/wildland firefighter, a police sergeant and a critical care nurse. I have  seen

more than my share of human tragedy. John, I do not know if you are a spiritual person; but if there is any validation of guardian angels it would have to be your crash. So many things were not in your favor.

The night of the 15^th, was the darkest, coldest night (wind chill) I can remember in Santa Fe County. The original cell phone pings gave coordinates from El Dorado to LaBajada. We threw two rescue packages

consisting of multiple agencies into the San Marcos basin. I got to your last radar signature coordinates, but you were still 500 feet off the deck from that location. The airport lights were in sight, unknown

to us is if you started a northern or southern track into the normal flight paths. There were few two track roads in the search area forcing all of us to go off-roading for the first couple of hours. I believe I came near

you twice before we you were (randomly) found by  Sheriff Deputies. You could only see within the diameter of our spotlights or headlights, nothing beyond. I am our County Fire Department’s Technical Rescue

Team Leader. Myself and a Lt. with the Sheriff Office were the third to arrive. Already providing patient care was Kevin Barrows another member of our Tech. Rescue Team. While Kevin was with you I deployed

Fire suppression equipment due to the fuel which had seeped into the fuselage.  I then established Command and transmitted the first true GPS coordinates. One of the rescue packages came directly to us. This package

consisted of all volunteers, an Ambulance and two Wildland Fire Trucks. Our Tech. Rescue Team already had two of our special rescue vehicles on site before this rescue packaged arrived. The second rescue packaged never made it to the crash site, this package was made up of all career staff, some six additional emergency vehicles which  were stopped by impassable topography. You were cut out of your aircraft, disentangled from all of the insterment panel wires, immobilized, treated for severe hypothermia and transported by ground mostly off-road where our Paramedic Daisy Graves took over your patient care. Daisy was in the second rescue package on the San Marcos side. Your Angel had to have protected you during  that long off road Ambulance journey to Daisy. Another member of our Tech. Rescue Team drove your Ambulance, Chris Novak. Any other night you would have been airevac by helicopter. After you were en-route to the hospital, many of us spent the next three hours getting several vehicles unstuck, changing a blown tire and flagging cut fences. All of this in brutal extreme cold weather. I remember talking with other firefighters while we were changing my tire and freezing our behinds off, how you were able to survive receiving a direct hit from those freezing winds for as long as you did. I think there is only one reason. I train our Tech. Rescue Team every year in Light Aircraft Rescue and Extreme Cold Weather operations. Those special rescue trucks, we have equipped for backcountry rescue operations. I am planning on taking our Team for the annual cold weather training two weekends from now where we start at ten pm and remain with a simulate patient until sunrise. We are hoping for snow this year, last year we did the ten hour training in mud! I look forward to meeting you in person. It would be very important to give you the opportunity, to thank the many who were involved on January 15. Talk to you soon. A pic to follow. Martin

Martin...Over the last year, I've become pretty good at processing truly incredible experiences, which processing began around Feb. 3 when I woke up from hallucinations (bet you didn't know that Toms River, NJ is right next to Northern Florida, which is where the Florida Keys are and where my friend lives and where I was "driving" a houseboat to, with an amphibious car that pushes the houseboat at an angle from the side like a tugboat; that's how everyone gets around in Toms River, you know; honest, officer, the key was in my pocket and it just happened to start that amphibious car!).  Yes, that was a scene from one out of about 30 chapters of hallucinations.  

The hallucinations were a series of my deadly-serious escapes from UNM Twilight-Zone-like "monitors" who were all over the country wherever my escaping took me.  I was not nice at all to them in my hallucinations, and when I woke up - and after the morphine pump started and the excruciating pain left - I apologized effusively to every nurse and tech and doc I saw for what I was sure were nasty things I had said.  They all laughed and said they'd seen it all and not to worry.  Their professionalism and kindness helped me physically and psychologically to make it through.  Though I initially didn't know (but would have guessed) about the professionalism, bravery, determination, care, and amazing skills of your teams of rescuers, now I know much more.  Your description is more amazing than my hallucinations, but it's easier to process because I know how to get to Santa Fe to shake the hands of the real and heroic people in that story.

Ken Hand, the FAA investigator, came to my room a day or so after I woke up and told me about the cellphone call and how I would have been a popsicle without it.  I told him and everyone else and later the NTSB, that the first thing I remember, after declaring the emergency, was seeing lights slowly moving to the right and sometimes disappearing, and then to the left and back and forth.  I remember knowing only that they were coming for me, but I don't think I knew who I was.  I don't remember feeling cold, only immobile and suspended in darkness.  I remember praying with all my might that the lights would reappear.  Whatever strength I had was praying for those lights.  When your lights disappeared, there was total darkness.  Prayer was my only hope of bringing the lights back.  That much I remember.  I saw you before you saw me.

Then I remember the lights' illumination all around as they were up close, and I saw the hole in the windscreen and the rocker switches in front of me, hanging from their wiring.  Only at that moment did I realize I had crashed (I recognized the rockers), but nothing more about previous events; and nothing specific about who I was.  I don't remember talking with anyone, as the online accounts described.  I remember being placed back horizontally, and I specifically remember starting to say, "Please try to preserve the plane;" but as I was about to say it, I heard the big CRUNCH of the hydraulic jaws, and I remember laughing to myself at the comic timing of it.  Then I distinctly remember saying, while horizontal and looking up into lights, "Thank God you're here; God bless you."  Though I've said similar things from time to time in my life, no words were ever more heartfelt than those.

When I called the Santa Fe Sheriff's dept from the hospital room to try to locate the ton of keys I carried in my pockets, the woman who answered said immediately that she couldn't believe I was alive.  She mentioned that when her "son had his accident in Santa Fe," his belongings were in the Sheriff's property department, and she was going to transfer my call there.  Before she did, I said I hope your son had a good recovery, as I was just assuming that.  She said, "No, but he was one of the angels watching over you."  I broke down (something I was doing a lot) and struggled to say through tears, God bless him and you.  That is a conversation I'll be processing for the rest of my life.

There have been many more experiences of similar emotional pitch for me over the last year.  Reading your email, was yet another.  It was amazing in all the good ways.

When I called my buddy in The Keys from the UNM hospital to tell him about my accident and that particular hallucination, in his inimitable way he said that most people go into the light; you were asking for the light to come to you. I laughed at his usual insight, and of course your lights were my second chance at life on earth, not the final moments.

When I come to see you and your colleagues, I won't take long out of your busy days to say what I want to.  I'll start by saying, "I saw you before you saw me."

Martin A. Vigil 

Nov 22, 2023, 2:26 PM

John. I had always planned on staying in touch with you. Then life, COVID, fires and floods kept coming. I hope you

and your family are doing well. We share your story every time a new member joins the team. Happy Thanksgiving.

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Illustrated definition of survivor's guilt, two years after crash.

Can't escape "the eternal note of sadness" for others.

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