A year after the tragic DC midair collision, first responders and others are remembered by victims’ families as heroes

By Alexandra Skores, CNN

(CNN) — Doug Lane had to make one of the most difficult decisions of his life last January.

An Army Black Hawk helicopter on a training mission and an American Airlines flight landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport collided over the Potomac River, less than a mile from the runway.

Lane’s wife, Christine, and 16-year-old son, Spencer – an award-winning figure skater – were on board the commercial jet.

More than 400 miles away, Lane was with their younger son at home in Rhode Island.

“There’s no playbook that you ever learn about (this),” he said. “I have my wife and son potentially in the Potomac River. Am I supposed to immediately leave and go down there? Am I supposed to stay with my son? Am I supposed to bring him with me?” he thought as he struggled with the decision.

He ultimately decided to leave his son with family, while he and his sister traveled to face the devastation.

The crash – the deadliest US aviation accident in over 20 years – killed 67 people – 64 passengers and crew members on the jet and three soldiers on the helicopter.

A year’s worth of investigative meetings and hearings on Capitol Hill would follow.

Now a federal investigation has nearly concluded, and the National Transportation Safety Board has determined the close helicopter routes and the Army crew’s perception of the wrong plane to be the probable cause of the collision.

In the days following the collision, Lane and the other victims’ families felt tremendous sorrow and loss after suffering the unimaginable. Mixed within those unbearably difficult moments were the instances of kindness and generosity shown by the first responders and personnel on the scene who, families say, treated them and their loved ones with respect and compassion.

CNN sat down with some of the first responders and medical personnel who braved cold, dark waters to search for the 67 people and asked them to reflect on the work they did, all while preserving the dignity of the families.

‘A really thick smell of jet fuel’

DC Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly Sr. says he remembers that frigid, winter night vividly. He was coming back from dinner at 8:48 p.m., when he heard the radio call from the DC fire team. Less than 10 minutes later, at 8:57 p.m., his crew reported the stench of jet fuel. He said it only took a few minutes to confirm it was an American Airlines regional commercial aircraft that had crashed.

“I knew at that point we were really going to have a big event,” Donnelly said. That night, he had conversations with the DC police chief and DC city administrator, and even spoke to the White House Situation Room several times.

Timothy Ochsenschlager, a diver with the Metropolitan Police Department’s Harbor Patrol Unit, was among the first dive teams to be dispatched. He remembered the loud sounds of helicopters overhead, and multiple search boats along the surface of the dark water.

“There was a really thick smell of jet fuel,” Ochsenschlager said. “The water had kind of a rainbow sheen to it, and it was really calm. There weren’t any waves or anything. I remember, just the entire airport shoreline just looked like it was all red and blue emergency lights, there had to have been 100 ambulances, fire trucks, police cars and everything.”

Helicopters departed later in the evening, and it became, “eerily quiet,” Ochsenschlager said.

“There are no planes landing at the airport, so there was nothing in the sky,” he said. “There were no boats going really fast around us. Everybody who was working there was really calm, just doing their job. When one person would get tired, there was somebody else to get in the water and take over.”

Intense waters and harsh visibility

Divers faced intense mud and near-zero visibility in the freezing waters of the Potomac that night, despite the aircraft having come to rest in only a few feet of water.

The night was “icy, cold and dark,” Malcom Gaines, a DC diver of 25 years, recalled, saying “It was chaotic but organized.”

Visibility was an issue for divers conducting the searches, so they relied on sonar equipment and dive lines, Gaines told CNN.

Hand-held sonar tools allow divers to scan the water quickly, even as they navigate difficult conditions like sharp pieces of debris and mangled metal from the wreckage.

Divers also faced other hazards such as exposure to electricity and jet fuel that was seeping from the aircraft, the veteran diver said.

Reuniting families with their loved ones

Within one hour of the collision, first responders already knew there weren’t going to be any survivors, Donnelly said. That’s when their attention shifted from the victims to taking care of the victims’ families, he said. “They became our first priority.”

The Metropolitan Police Department’s homicide division began making personal notifications to every family, he added.

“That meant, one, taking care of them at the airport,” Donnelly said. “Two, that we were making the effort to reunite them with their loved ones.”

The third priority was to take care of the first responders, who were “being exposed to a lot of trauma,” the DC Fire and EMS chief said.

In the days after, more than 500 people were involved in working the incident, according to Donnelly, who said at the time unified command was activating peer support for the first responders, “to make sure that everybody has somebody that can help us get through this.”

“They’re heroes,” Donnelly told CNN. “At the end of the day, it’s that simple. They did exactly what we expected of them, and more, in the moment of a crisis, they stood up.”

He shared how one of the divers worked 13 days straight after the accident.

Recovery teams brought a crane to the Potomac River crash site to help reach victims in a section of the wreckage that divers couldn’t get to. The crane was used to cut and lift pieces of the airplane to allow divers to safely recover additional victims, CNN reported.

When asked how he keeps on going after all of this, Donnelly teared up.

“In the moment, there’s a lot going on, so you’re dealing with that, and that’s the way I do it,” he said. “You compartmentalize the other part.”

Devastating moments in DC history

Throughout his career, Donnelly has been no stranger to aviation and other mass casualty events. He began working as a firefighter at the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which is responsible for Reagan National Airport, just a few years after the devastating crash of Air Florida Flight 90.

Although the 1982 crash into Washington’s 14th Street Bridge – which the NTSB determined was caused by inadequate deicing and pilot error – happened before Donnelly began working at the airport, the lessons learned would train him to handle aviation disasters in the years to follow.

He responded to the Pentagon the day after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, and the mass casualty event that occurred during the Unifest street festival in Anacostia, in 2007, where at least 35 people were injured, according to The Washington Post.

His team also responded to the riots at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Those events would prepare him for the difficult decisions of January 29, like deciding priorities and how they would be executed by the rescue teams.

Donnelly said he made himself and Dr. Francisco Diaz, DC’s chief medical examiner, available to the victims’ families after the crash to ask questions. Donnelly said one night Diaz spoke to families for hours.

‘She took the time to really get to know us’

Another employee at the DC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner was especially helpful to Lane.

“She took the time to really get to know us, get to know our family members,” Lane said, speaking of the lead forensic investigator. “It was clear that she truly cared about each of our family members.”

He also has memories of a boat captain who reached out to him after working the rescue boats that night and remembering his son, Spencer.

“Him and I were able to have a very difficult, but also, I think, helpful conversation, and it ended up really early on, making it clear to me just what a toll this incident took on the first responders as well,” Lane told CNN.

Days after the crash, family members were taken privately by the NTSB to visit the crash site.

“There was a a boat posted right at the wreckage, with people there watching over it (the site),” Lane said. “So it seems obvious in retrospect, but just that made me feel so much comfort, just being like, OK, even if my family members or other family members are still trapped in this wreckage, they’re not just left out there. There’s somebody there that’s kind of watching over them.”

Going the extra mile for closure

Sheri and Tim Lilley, the parents of First Officer Sam Lilley, one of the pilots on the American Airlines regional jet – made a special request to DC Harbor Patrol to lay a wreath at the crash site before their son’s May birthday.

On a “dreary, drizzly day,” as Tim recalls, the couple went out on a boat and played music and recited prayers. Tim said they were able to ask divers and first responders, who went out to search for victims that night, questions they hadn’t gotten answers to.

Lt. Andrew Horos with DC Harbor Patrol was on the boat that day and called the display really “powerful.”

“They conveyed to us that they felt very connected to Sam,” Horos said. “It was some sort of closure that we could provide. It was very emotional for everyone involved. It brought (first responders) some closure to be able to see our impact and our efforts that night and months after, really, really help the families out.”

The couple was also able to recover a wallet that belonged to their son – one of his possessions that had not yet been returned to the family.

Sheri wanted Sam’s scuba certification card from the wallet – a reminder of a fun activity the two had once done together.

The parents say tears filled their eyes as they laid the wreath on the murky water of the wreckage site, with the first responders who were there that night and the days after.

“They put their lives on the line to get our loved ones out with dignity,” Tim said. “They did what they could. They tried really hard. … We are always going to be in their debt.”

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