Throughout the night, the navy managed to recover an additional seven bodies from the crashed C-130J, most of them having drowned in the rear section of the plane. During the night, at around 3:15AM, several soldiers were trying to locate a body in the forward section of the plane when they heard a guardsman quietly moaning in pain in the rear fuselage. The soldiers located the guardsman but weren’t able to free him since he had been speared through the chest with a piece of rebar, locking him in place.
One of the soldiers told me that the guardsman was begging the soldiers for a handgun so he could kill himself, but the soldiers were forced to refuse the request.
At around 5:30AM, the navy managed to rescue a survivor from the forward section of fuselage. The guard was thrown backwards with the force of the crash and ended up being wedged between a crate and the cabin wall. The navy had to use buzz saws to rescue her, but she ended up surviving and being transported back to land using a tugboat.
When trying to cut away the rebar trapping the guardsman in place, the navy soldiers realized that their buzz saws couldn’t do anything to the steel rebar. When one of the soldiers explained to the guardsman that it would take an additional hour to get the supplies needed to free him, he reached into his belt and pulled out a medium sized knife. He then raised the knife up to his head and made eye contact with the the navy soldier who had spoken to him. The soldier lunged forward to pull the knife away from him but was slashed in the nose and the guard pushed him backwards into the water. Then, before the other two soldiers could react, he made eye contact with both of them before ramming the knife into his own skull, killing himself.
The Bogland Navy has recovered all of 21 bodies of the guards onboard the USCG C-130J. In total, there were four survivors, so no, they weren’t able to rescue the one guard that had called out for help.
Today, Southwest announced that they’d create new routes from Vail! These being:
Denver - 737 MAX 8 (5 weekly)
Reno - 737-800 (7 weekly)
Long Beach - 737-700 (2 weekly)
Los Angeles - 737-700 (1 weekly)
San Antonio - 737 MAX 8 (7 weekly)
New Orleans (Seasonal) - 737-800 (6 weekly)
La Guardia (Seasonal) - 737 MAX 8 (4 weekly)
Oakland and San Jose - 737 MAX 8 (6 weekly)
Fresno - 737-700 (3 weekly)
Sacramento - 737-800 ( 7 weekly)