Orphaned Crash Victims On The Mend

Three young brothers who spent 18 hours on a freezing mountainside in the wreckage of an airplane showed improvement at a hospital Tuesday, two days after the crash that killed the rest of their family.

The boys' body temperatures were back to normal, a doctor at Albany Medical Center Hospital said.

All three were also off ventilators, but it was too early to tell if any would lose extremities or tissue to frostbite, said Dr. Thomas Cohen, a pediatric trauma surgeon.

They were listed in critical condition. "They're all still pretty sick," Cohen said.

The family was returning from a Florida vacation when the plane crashed in the snow-covered mountains of southwest Massachusetts.

Ronald Ferris, 39, was piloting a single-engine Piper Cherokee on a flight from Harrisburg, Pa., to an airport near Keene, N.H., when he reported icing problems. Flight controllers soon lost radio contact Sunday evening.

Crews didn't spot the wreckage until midday Monday.

Ferris was pulled out alive but later died of a heart attack at a hospital. His wife, Tayne, and two sons, Shawn and Kyle, died in the crash.

Brothers Ryan, 2, Jordan, 5, and Tyler, 10, survived. Tyler also has a broken leg.

A rescue worker who was among the first to reach the crash site 1,700 feet up Mount Wilcox said it was miracle the boys survived. Temperatures overnight were below zero and the area was buffeted by 15 mph to 30 mph winds.

Emergency medical technician Charles Rappazzo said bodies piled on top of the two older brothers likely helped save their lives in the subzero cold. Ryan was of special concern, he said, because when rescuers found him, he was half-submerged in water. It appeared that he had been ejected through a door on the plane, police said.

Rappazzo also said that based on his observations, Tayne, Shawn and Kyle Ferris died from their injuries, not as a result of exposure to the cold.

Peter Dower, a friend of the Ferris family from Swanzey, N.H., said he spoke with the parents of Tayne Ferris on Tuesday.

"The boys are doing pretty well," he said. "I can't talk about specific conditions, but they're so much better than yesterday. They're improving considerably."

The flag flew at half-staff at Mt. Caesar Elementary School in Swanzey, where two of the boys attended school.
By Adam Gorlick