Last Friday marked exactly 30 years since Colorado Rockies radio voice, Jerry Schemmel survived a fatal plane crash in Sioux City, Iowa. Schemmel was one of 184 survivors on Flight 232, but over 100 lives were lost in the crash.
Flying from Denver to Chicago on July 19th, 1989, the United DC-10 airplane went down after losing hydraulic power and a rear engine exploded, killing 112 passengers. While attempting an emergency landing at the Sioux City, Iowa airport, Flight 232 fell just shy of its target runway, erupting into flames, breaking apart and tumbling to a halt.
“Immediately inside the cabin, it was complete chaos. People being thrown about, some of them were strapped inside their chairs and their chairs had given and they were thrown that way. And smoke and fire and debris, all in the first couple of seconds after we hit down,” Schemmel told KDLT News in Denver. “I remember thinking, all right, we’ve hit down hard, there’s a lot of people hurt, there’s probably some people who aren’t alive right now but we’ll coast to a stop and I’ll assess things then and about the time I had that thought, we flipped over frontwards, kinda cartwheeled end to end, flipped over and started sliding upside down.”
Schemmel was lucky to survive the crash, but the now Colorado Rockies broadcaster was also a hero that day in 1989. After Schemmel was able to find an opening to escape the plane, he heard a baby crying. He went back into the burning airplane and rescued an 11 month old girl trapped in an overhead bin. 52 children were on Flight 232, including four “lap children” without seats because of a United Airlines promotion called “Children’s Day,” allowing kids to fly for a penny.
To honor those who didn’t survive the crash, Schemmel, an avid bicyclist, rides 112 miles to Colorado Springs and back, one mile for each life lost. “It’s my way to personally honor the victims of the crash and the families who were left behind,” Schemmel told the Denver Post about the annual bike ride which he began in 2007.
Schemmel joined the Rockies radio broadcast in 2010, after 18 seasons as the voice of the Denver Nuggets. The play-by-play announcer told KDLT he still flies, regularly traveling with the team, but not a day goes by that he doesn’t think about the crash. Schemmel detailed his experience on Flight 232 in his 1996 book, “Chosen to Live.”
Brandon Contes is a freelance writer for BSM. He can be found on Twitter @BrandonContes. To reach him by email click here.