Into the Abyss - Snap Classic

Summary

Snap Judgment: "Into the Abyss - Snap Classic"

Podcast Overview
Title: Snap Judgment
Host/Author: Snap Judgment and PRX
Description: Snap Judgment blends real-life stories with compelling beats, creating cinematic and dramatic radio experiences. The podcast encourages listeners to view the world through diverse perspectives, offering storytelling "with a BEAT."

Episode: Into the Abyss - Snap Classic
Release Date: April 17, 2025
Focus: This episode delves into the harrowing story of the Wapiti Airlines Flight 402 crash in 1984, exploring the events leading up to the disaster, the survival ordeal, and the profound aftermath experienced by the survivors.

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The Crash of Wapiti Airlines Flight 402

The episode opens with a recounting of the tragic crash of Wapiti Airlines Flight 402 on October 19, 1984. Six lives were lost in the devastating accident, including Grant Notley, the leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in Alberta. Among the survivors were Eric Vogel, a 24-year-old pilot; Larry Shaban, Alberta's Housing Minister; Scott Deschamps, a rookie Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer; and Paul Archambeau, a prisoner being escorted to court.

Natalie Moore sets the scene, describing her personal connection to the story through her father, Larry Shaban. She reflects on the enduring bonds forged through shared trauma, highlighting how such experiences shape relationships differently than those from more stable backgrounds.

Natalie Moore [00:02]: "If you're listening to snap judgment."

Survivors' Accounts: Personal Stories from the Abyss

Initial Impact and Realization
Carol Chabin, Larry Shaban's daughter, narrates how she learned about the crash while working in Jerusalem. The news hit her hard, especially upon discovering that her father was aboard the ill-fated flight.

Carol Chabin [04:04]: "I was staggered by this and immediately I dropped the paper and I called home and I was frantic."

Pilot Eric Vogel's Struggle
Eric Vogel recounts his experience as the pilot under immense pressure to fly despite severe weather conditions. The Wapiti Airlines had a history of pushing safety boundaries, often ignoring adverse weather to maintain their flight schedule.

Eric Vogel [11:03]: "I started flying right out of high school and I had no real direction... But this was pretty high profile."

The Night of the Crash
On the night of the crash, poor weather conditions plagued the flight. Eric discusses the critical decisions made under duress, such as attempting to land at a small, remote airport, which ultimately led to the plane striking a hill due to icing and navigational miscalculations.

Eric Vogel [17:19]: "I decided I'm not going below. 800ft above ground... And unfortunately, it was 850ft high."

Survival Amidst Chaos

Formation of Survivor Bonds
In the immediate aftermath, the survivors struggled to maintain hope amidst freezing temperatures and physical injuries. Despite their disparate backgrounds—a politician, a police officer, a prisoner, and a pilot—their shared experience fostered a unique camaraderie.

Larry Shaban [20:36]: "We tramped through the snow because the snow was a good two and a half feet deep."

Building a Fire and Signaling for Help
The group prioritized keeping a fire burning to signal for rescue and stay warm. They ingeniously used aircraft seats to create flare signals, which eventually attracted the attention of search and rescue teams.

Eric Vogel [27:47]: "We ended up burning both seats."

Emotional Struggles and Mutual Support
Eric and Larry emerged as pillars of strength, supporting each other and managing the group's limited resources. Their interactions reveal deep emotional scars, especially for Eric, who grappled with survivor's guilt and the weight of his responsibility.

Eric Vogel [24:25]: "The pilot's responsible, it's still my flight, my passengers. I'm supposed to go now and... I had no skills."

Rescue and Aftermath

Search and Rescue Efforts
Despite efforts to signal their location, initial rescue attempts failed as search planes misinterpreted flare signals. It wasn't until the second morning, after persistent efforts and some successful signaling, that the survivors were located and extracted by a Chinook helicopter.

Eric Vogel [36:17]: "They started doing their triage and I kept saying, I'm not going first. Take everybody else."

Emotional Healing and Reconciliation
In the years following the crash, the survivors maintained contact, fostering a sense of forgiveness and mutual respect. Larry Shaban, grappling with terminal cancer, sought a reunion with Eric and the other survivors, signifying the enduring bonds formed through their ordeal.

Eric Vogel [41:53]: "You've been a hero in my new life, Larry, and I've tried to make you proud."

Legacy and Reflection
The episode concludes by acknowledging the profound impact of the crash on the survivors' lives. Eric Vogel found solace and redemption in volunteering as a firefighter, while Larry studied the event's legacy up until his passing. Carol Chabin highlights the importance of memory and forgiveness in moving forward from such tragedies.

Larry Shaban [40:25]: "I think that I have taken those extra 19 years justice somehow in terms of using the time."

Concluding Thoughts

"Into the Abyss - Snap Classic" is a poignant exploration of survival, responsibility, and the human capacity for forgiveness. Through personal narratives and emotional reflections, the episode underscores how shared trauma can forge unbreakable bonds, leading to profound personal growth and reconciliation. The story of Wapiti Airlines Flight 402 serves as a testament to resilience and the enduring human spirit in the face of unimaginable adversity.

For a more detailed account of the events surrounding Wapiti Airlines Flight 402, listeners are encouraged to read Carol Chabin's book Into the Abyss.

Transcript

[Natalie Moore]

SNAP Studios. I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still watch them. They're television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you, soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making Stories without end from WBEZ Chicago, join me as I share how the genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Snap Judgment is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. If you're lucky, very, very lucky, you get to grow up with siblings that you, for lack of a better word, you love. And growing up, I didn't say, hey, hey, knucklehead brothers, I love you. But in time, I've come to realize that I do, in fact, love them more than love them. And there are lots of horrors associated with trauma. I know this. But the gift of trauma at an early age is that it forges a type of sibling relationship that sometimes I don't see. From families that had an easier go of it. I've witnessed brothers, grown men who grew up together in the same home after a long time apart, greet each other by shaking hands, by nodding hello. What those of us that emerge from trauma households, we greet each other with bear hugs, jumping on each other's backs, suplexes and atomic wedgies. Every touch, every smack upside the head a reminder, a celebration that we made it through. And my brothers, they've both passed on too early. Far, far too early. But if I get to see them again in the next life, one thing I can absolutely guarantee is that day, that day, there won't be no shaking hands, no polite nods, no way. There will be joy. And for everyone that has been to the edge and looked over, today on Snap Judgment, we proudly present into the Abyss. My name is Lynn Washington, and if you've never dipped your siblings hands in hot sauce while they were sleeping, you should. You really should. When you're listening to snap judgment.

[Larry Shaban]

Snap.

[Natalie Moore]

Meet again by taking you back to the year 1988, incessant listeners should know that today's episode does involve a plane crash in which six lives were lost. In 1988, a young journalist based in Jerusalem, Carol Chabin, she comes across tragic news that's taken place 6,000 miles away near her hometown in northern Canada. Stamp judgment.

[Eric Vogel]

Wapiti got into big trouble back in October of 1984 when one of its planes crashed into a hill on a approach to a tiny community north of Edmonton. Six people died, including Alberta NDP leader Grant Nutley. Four others, including a cabinet minister, escaped without serious injury.

[Carol Chabin]

It was October 19, 1984, and I was working at a news agency in Jerusalem. And so on this particular morning, I was sitting at my desk and I was going through the Jerusalem Post and I just remember flipping through and it was a headline that jumped out at me and it said, party leader killed in Alberta Plane crash. And Alberta is my home province in Canada. And I zoned in on this article and I remember it so clearly. It was just a tiny block of text, less than 50 words, but it said, grant Notley, the leader of the New Democratic Party in Alberta and five other people were killed in a crash of their twin engine plane. And it went on to talk about one of the people on the plane and his name was Larry Shaban, my father. I was staggered by this and immediately I dropped the paper and I called home and I was frantic. I couldn't somehow believe that I didn't know what had happened. I didn't know if my dad was alive or dead. I didn't know anything. And I was feeling so far away. And my mom got on the phone and she just said to me, he's, he's okay. The crash happened in October and I couldn't get off work and get back to Canada until Christmas. And I remember seeing my dad and just not being able to put these two things together. This image in my head of this crash and my dad, who seemed fine. I mean, he had been terribly beaten up, his face was mangled. There were all of these injuries, but none of that was visible to me when I got home. But I think, you know, something had changed. There was something subdued, something kind of profoundly sad, an air that hung around him that had never been there before. My dad was always larger than life. For me, he was just dad, but for everyone else, he was this respected politician. People called him the honorable Larry Shabin. And I remember going to his favorite Chinese restaurant in Edmonton and the owner would come out and greet him and say, governor, hello, Governor, how are you? And there would be this flurry of kind of attention and activity around him and you could just get the sense that people were treating him in a very special way. He didn't really want to talk to me about what had happened. He kind of put it away in a. You know, like burying something in a box and putting it under your bed. It was just a closed chapter of his life.

[Natalie Moore]

One of those least injured was Harry Shabin, Alberta's housing minister.

[Eric Vogel]

How are you feeling, sir?

[Larry Shaban]

Just fine, thank you.

[Eric Vogel]

Will you share a few thoughts with us?

[Larry Shaban]

I'd prefer not to.

[Carol Chabin]

It wasn't until 18 years later that I was able to talk to him about what had happened that night. So I remember taking him down to my office in the basement, and I had a tape recorder ready, and I said, okay, tell me about this. Okay. I wanted to ask you about what you remember from that night and what happened. He said to me, you should look up Eric Vogel. You should look him up.

[Larry Shaban]

You should talk to the pilot.

[Carol Chabin]

Yeah, I'm gonna try and track him this.

[Larry Shaban]

It was tough for him.

[Carol Chabin]

I think he could feel that Eric was tortured by this. Immediately, I started looking for him. So I started looking for Vogels in the phone book and calling these numbers. And as I call, I'd say, I'm the daughter of Larry Shaban, this crash survivor, and I'm looking for the pilot. And people would say, yeah, no, wrong number, wrong number, wrong number. And then I called this Vogel, and I did my spiel about how I was the daughter of one of the plane crash survivors and I was looking for the pilot. It had been a woman who answered the phone, and there was this long silence. And I could feel in that silence that she did not want this question, this phone call coming. I knew before she'd even responded that I had reached the right number, and it was Eric's wife. And she said, he's on the road, but I could take your number. And I gave her my number, thinking, this isn't going to go any further. She does not want this past dredged up. It was evening when my phone rang, And I answered the phone, and this voice said, it's Eric Vogel. And I remember just feeling this chill. He made it very clear to me that if you weren't Larry Shabin's daughter, I would not be sharing this story with you. And he just began to talk to me about this. And I realized at that point, the deaths of six people were on his conscience every day. Like my dad, he had bottled this all up. I knew that he had a story that he had buried, and he needed to unburden himself.

[Eric Vogel]

I'm doing this as a favor to Carol, not to tell a really cool story, because it's not. But for me, anyway, but it's Just, I figured I owe Carol and I definitely owe her father.

[Carol Chabin]

So.

[Eric Vogel]

I started flying right out of high school and I had no real direction, didn't know what I wanted to do. And of course, my dad, being an airline pilot, was pushing me in that direction, and he got me enrolled in an aviation program. And it was that first summer that I was hooked and loved it and jumped into it.

[Carol Chabin]

He was desperately trying to earn enough hours. This is the way you move up in the airlines because they have to get a certain number of hours before they can even apply to the major airlines.

[Eric Vogel]

That was my goal. That was my incentive to do what I was told, to not get fired. And I tried too hard.

[Carol Chabin]

Wapiti airline started this kind of milk run that would go from Edmonton to High Prairie, which is where we lived, and on to other small communities in the north. And so rather, rather than my dad having to drive the four hours home, particularly in winter, he would take this flight. There were these scattered and remote communities, some of them accessible only by air. And these kinds of commuter airlines grew up with that tradition of we're going to push the weather and we're going to fight to get in even when the weather might indicate that they should be flying.

[Larry Shaban]

On this particular night, it was a snowy, overcast, really moist, Vancouver kind of weather.

[Carol Chabin]

The night of the crash, a lot of other major airlines had grounded their flights, but for Wapiti, they decided to go to take this flight.

[Eric Vogel]

I made a bit of an announcement in the terminal saying, hey, weather's really bad. There's a good chance we're not going to get into High Prairie, very small town. I had three passengers go in there, and I hoped they didn't want to go, but they did. So that didn't give me a lot of options to cancel the flight. What was expected was to break the rules was to get in no matter what. You fly overloaded, you fly below minimums, everything. And the morning pilot just said, be careful. He had a hard time taking off that morning because of the snow. And so that was my big concern. And I knew the weather was bad and I thought, okay, maybe it'll get better. But it turned out it got worse. You're supposed to have a co pilot in certain situations with weather being bad. But when we got to Edmonton, the ticket girl there said, they've bumped your co pilot because they want to put a paying passenger on your flight. And I still to this day can't get over how stupid that was.

[Larry Shaban]

I noticed that there was a guy, he wasn't in uniform, but he had somebody handcuffed to him. So we were going to have a prisoner and an rcmp. Of course, I was a little buzz because having a prisoner on an aircraft was a big deal.

[Eric Vogel]

I've never seen a prisoner in handcuffs before, and he was a pretty scruffy looking dude. That was a little intimidating knowing that.

[Carol Chabin]

He was on the plane that night. There were nine passengers and the pilot on the plane. And of those passengers, only the pilot, my dad, the criminal and the cop survived. Paul Archambault was a drifter and a vagabond. And Scott Deschamps was this rookie rcmp, this by the book cop. The day that Paul was picked up, he was in Kamloops, and Scott Deschamps, being an RCMP based in Grand Prairie, where the sentencing was, had flown out to bring him back. And so basically from there, Paul and Scott Deschamps were handcuffed to one another.

[Eric Vogel]

Scott Deschamps, the RCMP officer, came up to the counter and plunked down these two wrists that were chained together with handcuffs and said, where do you want us to sit? There was a story in vancouver of a 10 passenger airplane where the prisoner was in the back and he broke free and he was climbing over the seats trying to get to the pilot. Well, in this plane, the Nava, there's actually an aisle down the middle. So I said, I know exactly where you're sitting. You're sitting at the back of the plane. And that's where I put him. That was as far away as I could put him from me in the cockpit.

[Carol Chabin]

They had been in airports all day long and on standby and several long waits. And they got to talking and Scott could see that Paul wasn't a dangerous, malicious guy. They had started to form this kind of rapport. They got on, they were seated on the plane, their final leg, and Paul turned to Scott and said, hey, can you just take these off me for the flight?

[Larry Shaban]

And I remember Deschamps and Archambeau talking, and he said, take these handcuffs off for the flight, although it's against RCMP rules to do that.

[Carol Chabin]

But at that point he really felt that this guy was of no risk whatsoever. He would be fine.

[Eric Vogel]

Getting out of there. I was running behind. I had to get going. Everything started out okay, but it was just trying to decide what to do along the way. We were one of the only airlines flying in this terrible weather.

[Carol Chabin]

The wings were icing up and there were huge sheets of ice building on the forward edges of the wing.

[Eric Vogel]

My de ice equipment didn't work. And I'm flying in a severe icing situation. And I'd actually discussed this with the passengers. I said, hey, you're gonna hear banging against the fuselage. It's just chunks of ice coming off the prop. It's no big deal. Well, it is a big deal.

[Carol Chabin]

He's doing dead reckoning. I mean, this is before GPS and all of these tools that would help a pilot. He was trying to do mathematical equations. How far out was he? How far back? And what he didn't realize was the thickness of this ice had really slowed the progress of the plane. And he was 20 miles further back than he thought he was.

[Eric Vogel]

I said, hey, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go down and try to land in this little airport, and if I can't, I'm going to come right back up and I'm going to go back onto my flight plan. Just as I started leveling it, about 900ft to level at 800, which is the altitude that I decided I'm not going below. 800ft above ground, over the airport, there was a hill about 850ft high. Not a mountain, just a hill, just a rise in the land. But unfortunately, it was 850ft high. So I literally leveled off in the trees. I heard the banging and then thought it was ice coming off the propellers. And it turned out to be the trees.

[Larry Shaban]

It was a really loud rending of metal. Obviously, we're going through the trees and the stuff was being torn off the aircraft.

[Eric Vogel]

You're talking seconds. So by the time my brain registered the banging, dismissed it, we had impact. Once I figured out that I was. There was no light because the batteries had been gone. I didn't realize I was upside down. The wings came off, lost the nose cone right in front of us.

[Larry Shaban]

The fuselage was virtually upside down. Because I know when I undid my seat belt, I fell, you know, onto my hands and knees.

[Eric Vogel]

Turned out to be the window beside me had broken, and I could feel the air. And getting out of that airplane would have been impossible for me in the front. If the window hadn't broken. I would have had a real hard time breaking the window. There's no exit up front.

[Larry Shaban]

My glasses were gone. I found my coat and put it on, and there was a lot of groaning. Alive but unconscious. It was awful.

[Eric Vogel]

Larry followed me out, and I didn't. Wasn't till I was outside, till I saw him. And I was on my hands and knees. And I remember looking to my left and seeing Paul standing There, and he had gone out a window. He was literally uninjured. He had a scratch on his forehead that was. That had bled a bit. Other than that, he was untouched. We kind of gather ourselves, but Paul was right from the get go, adamant that he had to get Scott. So they had developed a pretty good relationship, which is why he was uncuffed.

[Carol Chabin]

And as it happened, it was that move that ended up saving Scott's life, because had Paul Archambeau been handcuffed, there's nothing he could have done to save his captor.

[Eric Vogel]

He went in there, and when he was in, he was digging around for Scott. And I remember Scott started to come around, and I can't imagine how stressful that was for Scott to wake up, not know where you are and know you're trapped.

[Larry Shaban]

Duchamp was saying, I can't breathe. I can't breathe.

[Carol Chabin]

And he was upside down.

[Larry Shaban]

He seemed to be jammed into the snow somehow.

[Eric Vogel]

And Paul was able to dig him out and bring Scott out.

[Larry Shaban]

We tramped through the snow because the snow was a good two and a half feet deep. And we tramped through the snow maybe, I don't know, a couple hundred feet from the earth. Plane crash, sort of to make a path.

[Carol Chabin]

Yeah.

[Larry Shaban]

And tramped out a little space.

[Eric Vogel]

Somehow this fire appeared. Paul got a fire going in the deep snow. Everything's wet. And then we eventually ended up around the fire, and that fire saved us for sure.

[Larry Shaban]

There's a lot of stuff in the plane, papers and stuff that we burned. So we burned whatever we could. And then there was scraps of wood lying around, but it was wet because it was in the snow. So we would try and pull bark off trees from up high.

[Carol Chabin]

That night, there were nine passengers. These were all local people who either worked in the city or had been in the city and were desperate to get home that night. And six of those people did not ever leave that hillside.

[Eric Vogel]

Most of the seats broke loose, except for Paul's. His was actually anchored because it's bolted in. Everybody else's is just clipped in. And if we'd all had seats like that, who knows what would have happened? But that was where the fatalities came from. The seats all broken loose because they're designed to come out quickly because we also did medevacs.

[Natalie Moore]

Stay tuned. Our four survivors are bracing for a long, cold night in the remote Canadian wilderness. Won't return. Snap Judgment FOREIGN welcome back to Snap Judgment. You're listening to the into the Abyss episode. And when last we left, four men had just survived the crash of Wapiti Airlines Flight 402. There's Eric Vogel, the 24 year old pilot who's flying the plane. Politician Larry Shaban, rookie cop Scott Duchamp, and Paul Archambeau, who's being escorted to court for sentencing. As together they shiver by the fire in the middle of the blizzard, they could only wonder if help is on the way. Snap judgment.

[Eric Vogel]

I had thought that I can't tell these guys I'm the pilot because they're, they're gonna get pretty upset with me. The prisoner I never trusted. I thought, okay, this could go sideways. Scott was immobile. He was laying on the ground. He had torn all his intercostal muscles and he couldn't move. So he basically laid in the, in the snow beside the fire. And I thought, okay, he's not gonna be able to protect me. And he kept asking for his briefcase. He wanted his gun and I was concerned why he wanted his gun, but he was thinking bears and wolves and things and he wanted to have his gun, but it was long gone. Being on my hands and knees in the snow trying to get my head around what I had just done. And I knew it was me, of course I knew I had done it. I was ready to give up right there. And this was a pretty helpless feeling. The pilot's responsible, it's still my flight, my passengers. I'm supposed to go now and you know, like the captain of the ship and I had no skills. I was supposed to gather everybody up and get them to the fire and start a fire and signal for help and just had nothing. And it was probably the other voices and Larry being beside me that kept me going.

[Carol Chabin]

He was so ashamed and tortured by what he'd done, that this was his fault and the deaths of these people were on his conscience. I mean, remember he was 24, he was just a kid. Eric didn't tell them until quite a bit later when they were sitting around the fire that he was the pilot.

[Eric Vogel]

I told them that I'm the pilot. And of course they said what happened? And I tried to tell them the whole story right from the beginning.

[Carol Chabin]

One of the big things with Wapiti Airline is it had been sighted for all sorts of infractions. There had been a line of pilots who'd gone to the Transportation Canada saying this is an unsafe airline. Pushing the weather, making pilots fly when they were exhausted, making them drop down below the acceptable ceilings, maintenance issues where the planes weren't properly maintained, and there were mechanical issues. So this airline was known, it was known in the industry to be One of these bad operators, apparently, we were.

[Eric Vogel]

Under super secret probation. They were putting people on the flights to monitor it. And I thought, well, how can this company keep operating? We had been led to believe that they had an ace in the hole. They had two people that were supporting the company. And whenever they got in trouble, these people would write a letter and make a phone call and say, hey, don't shut these guys down. So they acted a bit invincible that they could do what they wanted. They were protected. And it just deflated us because we now we can't even go to Transport Canada for help. We were basically, we're on our own and you are on your own. But they knew when I got to the part about, you know, how this company was able to operate this way, and I said, there's people out there that were supporting this company. And Larry admitted right away, he goes, this is pretty crazy that I'm on board this flight because I'm one of those people. And the other ones in the aircraft.

[Larry Shaban]

Vogel was really good hurting in terms of mentally hurting, because he could just tell. I mean, he was the guy, he was the pilot. The plane went down, and in addition to that, he was hurt physically, but he worked at keeping the fire going and helping until he couldn't move anymore.

[Carol Chabin]

Eric was relentless in his efforts to try and make things right. He was trying to do everything within his power. Even though he had a punctured lung, he was coughing up blood. His hands were mangled. They were unusable because the window of the cockpit had come at him and just torn up his hands.

[Eric Vogel]

I felt weak, and it was probably the blood loss. If I kept trying to walk around, I probably would have collapsed, but I just kind of gave up and sat down. I remember being really cold. I was in a light cotton shirt, and I'd had a parka that I had from the Arctic days, and I'd given that to Scott because he's laying in the snow.

[Larry Shaban]

It was really trying to keep Deschamps comfortable. And then after that, Archebault and I kept hauling whatever we could call find to keep the fire going.

[Eric Vogel]

Keeping the fire going was pretty tough. And we were running out of things to burn. And there was two aircraft seats that were outside. So the plane opened up in the front and wreckage had been strewed. It was quite a debris trail. And we found a chair. And I said, throw that chair in the fire. And I remember Scott saying, that's not going to burn. That's an aircraft seat. And I said, yeah, actually it is. We Placed the seat over top of the small fire. And it never was a big fire until we put the seat in and this seat flashed up and it just was like a Roman candle and it was crazy. And they wanted to burn the other one. I said, no, hang on, this is like a flare. We've got nothing to signal with. Keep the other seat. We put it aside and we thought, when we hear them or see them, we're going to put the seat in and that'll be our signal fire. And we held out for quite a while until we were super cold and freezing again. And we thought, screw it, we're gonna burn the other seat. So we ended up burning both seats.

[Carol Chabin]

My dad had given Paul Archambeau his cigarettes that night to hang onto, and they'd lit cigarettes together and wandered into the forest.

[Larry Shaban]

Archambault had a lot of nervous energy. I'd hurt my hands from the whatever damage, kiss, but my hands were all beat up and my glasses were gone, so I had trouble handling my cigarettes. So I said, I said, you carry him. And the little booger was a chain smoker. So they were gone. I mean, it was, I think, almost a full pack. And they were gone by about 2 in the morning. That was funny.

[Eric Vogel]

Larry. I didn't know he wore glasses. So he lost his glasses and he wouldn't sit down. He was very fidgety. And it turned out he had a broken tailbone. And it wasn't comfortable to sit down, but he insisted on standing the whole night. And Paul was all over the place and running around and Scott was immobile. He couldn't get up. He kind of, kind of just laid there by the fire. And eventually I did too. I couldn't get up anymore and I apologize, I couldn't get more wood. So we really relied on Paul. And Larry would follow him. And I don't know how Larry did it all night. And Scott and I basically just laid by the fire. We decided that if we had fallen asleep, we might not wake up because of hypothermia. And so we just kept each other awake. Said, you know, you can't fall asleep. Can't fall asleep.

[Larry Shaban]

That's funny. You know, in a case like that, you're all complete strangers. And then as the evening wore on, there's a little more chatter. And I think part of the shock, the realization of what had happened and that sort of thing.

[Eric Vogel]

I don't think I would have survived if I was by myself. You know, forget survivor's guilt. Just being there on your own would have been Pretty horrendous. And without a fire, I wouldn't have survived. So, yeah, having, having each other to talk to. And we all, we all told personal stories and some jokes.

[Larry Shaban]

We were sitting there and I said, if you had one wish that you could have fulfilled right now, what would you wish for? And Deschamp talked about his relationship with his wife, where they had been getting along and she wanted to have a child and he didn't want to have a child. And he said, I'd tell my wife I'm sorry and let's have a child and make this thing work. And Arshibuho, I said, if you, you know, if you had one wish, I'd like, enjoy.

[Carol Chabin]

That's it.

[Natalie Moore]

That's what he wanted.

[Larry Shaban]

It's a joint.

[Carol Chabin]

What'd you say?

[Larry Shaban]

I said, I want the hot bath. That's what I want.

[Carol Chabin]

You're cold.

[Larry Shaban]

That's what I wanted. I mean, it was really the only thing I wanted, right there was a hot bath.

[Carol Chabin]

You were really cold, dad.

[Larry Shaban]

Yeah, I was cold, dirty and grungy.

[Eric Vogel]

My mom made these famous chocolate chip cookies. They're big cakes. So when I left that morning for my flight, not knowing when I would eat again, I took four of these cookies. I don't know why I took four, they're quite big. But I took four and I wrapped them up and I put them in my flight bag. And the flight bag is jammed between our, our passenger seats in the front. And I told Paul, I said, paul, when you're in the plane, you need to go into my flight bag and there's four cookies in there and bring out whatever you find. So he came back. The bag couldn't be removed, but he came back and he found the cookies. Well, we all got a cookie, which was pretty amazing. And he gave me my logbook and I looked at this. I said, well, I'm never gonna need this again. So I was tearing out the pages and feeding them into the fire, and I can't remember who it was. Said, well, you're gonna need that. And I think, you know what? I'm never gonna need this again. This is. I'm done. No one's ever gonna hire me after this. So we burned the logbook.

[Carol Chabin]

In those moments of hopelessness, there were snippets of conversation where they would talk about how demoralized they were and this sense that it's not going to happen. We're not going to get out of here alive.

[Eric Vogel]

We crashed a little after 8:00 at night probably. I think it was 20 after 8. So it was most likely in the middle of the night, probably after midnight, that they were dropping these flares. And they were dropping the flares for the ground crews to aim towards these flares. And the first one they dropped was right on our heads. So you can imagine how excited we were to see that. And I thought, there you go. They dropped a magnesium flare right over us. That was a pretty good signal. I said, they found us. And. And everybody's pretty excited. And I'm. And I'm listening. The plane flew away, and then it dropped another one miles away, and then it dropped to three. So when I saw the third flare drop, I said, guys, we got a problem. And they said, what? I said, they don't know where we are. And he goes, why do you say that? I said, well, look, why would they drop flares way over there and way over there if they think we're here? And it got real quiet again. And I said, they're just dropping flares. They don't know where we are. But it's good that they're dropping them near us. That's helpful. But I said, they're just dropping them in the area. So I said, again, again, until this thing circles. So we went back to basically ignoring the plane. It would fly over, and we wouldn't even look up anymore.

[Natalie Moore]

After the break, with all hope fading, after darkness falls, can the survivors keep each other alive until the morning? Stay tuned. Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the Into the Abyss episode. My name is Glenn Washington, and before we left, search and rescue efforts to locate the crash site have been going on throughout the night, but neither wreckage nor survivors have been spotted through the harsh snowstorm. Snap Judgment.

[Eric Vogel]

So the next day, the sun came up and I said, guys, we're in trouble. We can't see. And if. If we can't see up, they can't see us. So there was the overcast and low fog. So I said, it's going to be a while yet. And we could see the plane, which was pretty tough to look at. It was about 50ft away from us. And if you can imagine a white aircraft in the snow and a bunch of black objects around a fire that's smoking not even a flame. It's just smoldering. There was nothing for them to see. They're looking for the plane. They're not looking for us. They flew over and they were gone because they're going real fast. And I said, no, don't get excited. That's cool. These guys are sure trying. They're looking. And we could see all these people looking out the back of the door. And the plane disappeared.

[Carol Chabin]

There was a point where the plane was there and then gone. You said it was really demoralizing.

[Larry Shaban]

Yeah, that's right, because they were waving and waved whatever we could really. Seemed to come in and move low over the trees.

[Eric Vogel]

So they left and I thought, okay, they're, they're all looking somewhere else. And it got quiet again. And then I heard the Twin Otter come and he flew over and went right by and I said, okay, cool, Twin Otter's here. You can go a little slower. And in that break in the sunshine, and it's the only break we'd ever seen, and it was right over top of us. Maybe from the, the smoke from the fire, I don't know, it just opened up and they looked down and they saw us all there. The pilot put it into a tight, tight 360, encircled, basically stood it on its wing right on top of us. And then I said, okay, they found us. And I could see him in the window and that was a pretty good feeling. And I said, okay, we might get out of this.

[Carol Chabin]

Around mid morning 10:30, the plane had been spotted. And in a break in the clouds, the search and rescuers had seen that there were three people around the fire.

[Eric Vogel]

You could hear the big blades of this Chinook coming in. And it flew over and hovered off, not over top of us, fortunately, because it's pretty chilly under those blades. And they started coming down the rope and then it flew out of the way and the crew came by the plane. I could see them looking at the plane as they walked by and they could see us and they walked up. But the first thing he said was, I guess the pilot's dead. And of course the guys thought that was funny. They said, no, he's sitting right there. And the look on his face. But I said, no, no, I'm right here.

[Carol Chabin]

And then how did they get you up out of the bush?

[Larry Shaban]

They winched us up this big Chinook helicopter hovered over top, noisy as could be.

[Eric Vogel]

They started doing their triage and I kept saying, I'm not going first. Take everybody else. And they scooped up Larry and Paul because they were ambulatory. They were standing, it was easy to scoop them. And I just sat there and I remember the guy gave me an IV bag to put inside my jacket. Paul had found us some clothes and I had someone's jacket on. I was looking down at Scott while they were packaging him up and getting him ready to hoist him up. And I Was kind of sitting up. And then I remember thinking that I was doing pretty good. And one of the reasons I didn't bleed to death, the doctor told me, was because of the cold. Your body goes into shock and it shuts down your extremities. And I had lacerations. My wristwatch slid open my wrist and nothing was coming out of it. It was just a big gaping hole that I could put my finger in and no blood was coming out. So that made sense. I didn't bleed to death because of the cold. So he said the cold actually helped you guys. I felt really warm and it was a weird feeling. I just felt warm all over. And I thought, okay, I'm being rescued, this is good. The doc came over, looked at my pupils and said, this one goes next. And they scooped me out of there. Six people, including Alberta NDP leader Grant Notley, died when the Wapiti Airlines flight smashed into a hill. Four people, including pilot Eric Vogel and Provincial Housing Minister Larry Shaban, survived the crash. For me, it was like, how am I going to face the world? How am I going to face everything? Knowing what I'd done, Did I want to survive? It was hard to feel that good about being alive. And that started right away.

[Carol Chabin]

Did you ever think you weren't gonna make it, dad? No, never.

[Larry Shaban]

No.

[Carol Chabin]

You said once that you kind of mark that date every year and you look at what you've done with it.

[Larry Shaban]

Yeah. And that's what I was saying this morning. I think that I haven't done those extra 19 years justice somehow in terms of using the time.

[Eric Vogel]

Larry was amazing, such a gentleman, and really helped me through the whole thing. He would reach out to us. It started with phone calls and then later became emails and messages, but it was an annual thing on October 19th. I used to take the day off and just reflect and just do nothing. But as the years went on, I just kind of went, okay, today's the day, and kind of just thought about it all day. I was realistic. I thought, well, my airline career is done. I know there's lots of pilots out there that have had accidents, but this was pretty high profile. But in the meantime, I'd gone back to being a volunteer firefighter and I really enjoyed it. I thought, this is a great career. And I got on hired in the fire department. It's a very respectable job. It's a good calling. And it gave me back my self respect and I embraced it.

[Carol Chabin]

The survivors, the three who were still alive toward the end of my dad's life, had been in touch but there was a point when it was coming up to the 20 year of the reunion and I think my dad was getting older. He was 69, probably sensed that life was passing. And he basically said, we need to meet. We need to see each other all together face to face. And he arranged for the three survivors to meet.

[Eric Vogel]

We went for a meal at a nearby hotel and we just didn't stop talking the whole time. We joked about doing that reunion in another 20 years, but I think Larry knew he wasn't well at the time. It's pretty amazing that they've kept me in their life considering what I had done. So that always amazed me that I was forgiven right from that First Night.

[Carol Chabin]

In 2008 when my dad was dying of cancer. Eric Vogel reached out to me and, you know, it was a month short of the anniversary of the crash, so they'd obviously been in touch. And I received an email from Eric.

[Eric Vogel]

I had a lot of things I wanted to say to him. I was 24. He was pretty worldly, he was a politician. He knew what was going on. And just the way he treated me right from the get go. And I did not expect that. I felt I owed him everything because of the way he treated me right from that first moment.

[Carol Chabin]

He said, could you please just read this to your dad? I know he's in his last days and I never got a chance. I didn't get back to Edmonton from Vancouver before my dad died. But I was able to read Eric's email at my dad's service, and in it he wrote to Larry, I'm writing this with a heavy heart from my new desk job. The only reason that I looked forward to October 19th was because I would get a note from you reminding us that we were lucky to be alive and how great life was going. It always made me smile. You've been a hero in my new life, Larry, and I've tried to make you proud. With our new lease on this life, I was hoping to give you a new tie pin to go with the bugle that I gave you. This one is my new captain's bugle that came with my promotion. I know it's just a job, but this job helped me redeem myself to you and many others. I will miss you, my friend. And now I have to explain to my chief across the room why a 6 foot 3 fire captain is crying at his desk.

[Natalie Moore]

A huge thank you to Eric Vogel, to the late Larry Shabin, and to his daughter Carol for sharing the story with Snow. There is so much more we're not able to share with you about Eric and Larry's experience. To find out more about what transpired with WAPI Flight 402, check out Carol Chabin's book Into the Abyss. A special thank you to Nikka Singh for his help with this story. The original score for this piece was by Renzo Goriot. It was produced by Bo Walsh. I understand. Never enough stories, never enough. But if you want more, if you need more, travel the world with us and follow Snap Judgment, the podcast. Wherever you get your podcast, hours of adventure await. If you want to join the Snaptastic conversations, know that Snap's on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Don't Miss a Beat Stuff is brought to you by the team that always texts to make sure you made it home safe. Except of course for Mark Ristich. He insists on calling on the phone. I don't know why. I don't wanna speak to anybody. I think I've made that plain. There's Nancy Lopez, Patmosini Miller, David Exame, Anna Suzman, Renzo Gorio, Shayna Shealy, Taylor Cott, Flo Wiley, John Facil, Marissa Dodge, Bo Walsh, Amy Nguyen, and Zahra Norvosh. And you may have heard that this is not the news. No way is this news. In fact, you can walk outside, hop into the back of a waiting car, explain to the Uber driver where you're going, only to have him tell you that ah, he ain't no Uber driver. Cause this ain't no Uber. But you, you know what the heck, he is going that way and can certainly give you a ride. True story. And you would still, still, even then, not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is PR.