Acton Man On Vacation Rescues Passengers After Miami Beach Helicopter Crash
ACTON (CBS) – An Acton father and daughter just wanted to escape the New England winter for a few days, but ended up just feet away when a helicopter crashed into the water in Miami Beach.
"It was scary. It was very scary being that close," said Wade Callison.
Too close for comfort. Callison and his teenage daughter, Avery, were enjoying the sunshine on South Beach when Callison noticed a helicopter flying very low.
"As we're watching it, all of a sudden he banked and started going down and there was one couple up a little bit to our left and we were yelling to them, 'watch out, watch out, it's coming down,'" Callison explained.
The helicopter crashed into the Atlantic – just feet away from Callison near a sandbar in front of a packed beach.
"Twenty feet if that," Callison said. "When it hit, it splashed us. The canopy shattered, the glass canopy, it fell in front of us. It was really, really close."
Instead of running to shore, Callison and another bystander rushed to the wreckage to help rescue those onboard.
"As I looked over the top, the canopy was broken – the pilot had gotten himself loose and was standing up. The woman in the front seat was just dazed – she was all gashed up," he said. "The other guy and I unbuckled her, got her out, floated her out of the canopy."
Other beachgoers tried to hold the aircraft upright in the water as the pair carried two female passengers to shore in their arms.
Callison said he was just trying to enjoy a relaxing weekend in Florida with his daughter but acted as a first responder instead.
"I'm a software guy, I'm definitely not – I missed my calling clearly," he laughed.
He doesn't consider himself a hero either.
"My concern was, are they going to pull through? And they are, they're recovering and that's great," Callison told WBZ-TV. "More than anything it was a life experience."