SAVED: Rescuers pull Christopher Smidt and Denise De Priester from the icy Hudson in Yonkers after their plane crashed and Smidt told 911: “I’m not going to make it”. (
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A frantic 911 call captured the terror of a small-plane pilot and her passenger after their craft crashed into the frigid Hudson River over the weekend.
“We are in the plane! The plane is taking on water!” passenger Christopher Smidt, 43, told an emergency operator after the single-engine plane crashed off Yonkers on Sunday afternoon.
Smidt, a New Jersey corrections officer, told the dispatcher they were all but doomed.
But Westchester County police dispatcher Melissa Seymour stayed calm as she first quickly determined that Smidt and pilot Denise De Priester, 39, had flotation devices — and then told them to abandon the craft.
“I need you to get out of the plane and let me know when you’re out,” Seymour said. “I need you to get out of the plane so you’re not trapped.”
Smidt and De Priester hustled out of the plane as its nose filled with water.
“It’s going down!” Smidt said before telling the pilot: “Get out, get out! It’s going head first!”
Seconds later, the water can be heard in the background.
“The water’s freezing,” Smidt said. “We’re out. I’m not going to make it to shore!”
Seymour assured him, “We have an officer en route, and we have a boat en route.’’
Then the call is cut off.
“I lost him,” the worried dispatcher can be heard saying.
But three off-duty Yonkers police officers and a retired colleague, who happened to be at a nearby boat club, rushed into action. Twenty minutes later, they pulled out the freezing pair.
Smidt and De Priester, taken to Jacobi Hospital in The Bronx, were released yesterday.
“I will tell you this, she did the best,” Smidt told The Post of Seymour. “I’m fine. She did a great job.”
Added De Priester, “I’m OK. We’re doing fine.”