‘It’s kind of emotionally traumatic’: Good Samaritan who tried to save floatplane pilot

KENT, Wash. — Only on KIRO 7, a Good Samaritan describes jumping into action after watching a floatplane crash into Lake Meridian.

How a neighborhood came together to try to save one of their own.

That pilot, 74-year-old Alan Williams, remains in critical, but stable condition in the ICU at Harborview Medical Center.

The floatplane he was flying Saturday morning crashed as he tried to land on Lake Meridian -- near where he lives.

Several neighbors rushed to their boats to try to help.

This was a neighborhood effort to rescue this pilot.  Indeed, it was. Many people who live here own boats. And they didn’t hesitate.  They put their boats into the lake and went out to try to rescue that pilot.

“I’ve never been in anything like this,” said Dan Young. “It’s kind of emotionally traumatic, I think.”

It is still weighing heavily on Young, his and others’ heroic effort to rescue a pilot whose floatplane crashed into Lake Meridian Saturday morning.

“I think taking the boat out there and expecting to have the pilot come out and they do not,” said Young, “was very emotionally difficult I think for most everybody who was involved in this.”

It turns out that pilot was their neighbor, Alan Williams.

“We saw the seaplane attempting to land,” Young said. “And as it touched down, it immediately did a nosedive into the water and crashed.”

His 14-year-old son, Grayson, witnessed it, too.

“Like right, as I saw it, I, like, took my phone and took a video like as soon as possible,” Grayson said.

His dad and a couple of siblings jumped into the family’s boat.  Young put on goggles and a snorkel and tried to open the pilot’s door.  But it wouldn’t budge.  Another neighbor came up in his boat.

“I handed the mask to him,” Young said. “I was out of breath. And they attempted to do that. Then many more boats started coming in.”

By then Puget Sound Regional Fire and Rescue was on the scene, and Young and his neighbors started helping them. They got Williams out, but he was unconscious. So, they immediately began CPR.

The pilot’s next-door neighbor recounted what others have told him.

“My understanding is over 50 years he’s been in the air,” said Kevin Briscoe. “I don’t know all of the details.  But my understanding, he was in the Marines, was a bush pilot in Alaska and certainly was a private pilot here locally for a number of years.”

Now they are praying for him.

“It’s just hard you know, knowing you want to help, and you know there’s someone under water and you can’t get to them,” Young said. “And then there they are, inside a plane.”

It is so difficult all around.

Alan Williams continues to fight for his life.  And his neighbors are praying he makes it.

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