Passenger aboard Delta flight recounts moments after crash

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“Land hard. Slide fast. Roll. Done.”

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Those were the words on Tuesday from Peter Carlson, a 20-year veteran paramedic from Minneapolis, who was aboard the Delta Air Lines flight that crashed Monday afternoon at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.

“(It was a) forceful landing onto the runway,” said Carlson. “We definitely felt like we dropped very heavily. And very quickly.”

Carlson was flying from Minneapolis to Toronto to attend the Ontario Association of Paramedic Chiefs Paramedicine Knowledge Exchange Expo.

But the crash landing left him and the other 76 passengers and four crew members aboard the plane suspended upside down in their seatbelts looking at the ceiling, which had now become the floor.

The smell of jet fuel filled his nostrils and screams from other passengers filled his ears.

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“Suddenly I had a feeling of just real confusion in terms of the slide, the flip, the finding myself upside down,” said Carlson. “And you know that moment, I kind of snapped into it, ‘where am I and am I okay? Am I alive? Do my arms work, do my legs work?’” he said.

After assessing himself, he thought about his family and sent a message to his wife and children: “I love you, I love our kids.”

Then he thudded to the ceiling of the upside-down plane after releasing his seatbelt and went into paramedic mode. After seeing shooting flames outside the plane, he asked himself, “‘How do we get out of here?’”

“Then there was a concern with the gas that perhaps we shouldn’t open the (emergency) door, but obviously not a lot of alternatives to that,” Carlson said. “Is it safe to get out and are others able to?”

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Carlson then helped the man beside him, then a woman who was crumpled under seats, and then he helped calm down a young boy, showing him pictures of his own family.

“I feel great to be alive, incredibly thankful for the support and the help we had (Monday), and I feel very excited to see my family.”

On Tuesday at the expo, Carlson said he was still “numbed” by the entire experience and didn’t sleep much overnight as he tried to make sense of everything and “getting a bit of a fresh perspective.”

In the morning he spoke with psychologists and medical staff provided by Delta.

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He was asked if he had seen the videos on social media feeds of the plane crashing and bursting into flames before sliding upside down.

“I unfortunately saw the video this morning (Tuesday),” he said.

“It had a really physical effect on me,” Carlson added. “I didn’t think it could get more scary, more real.”

At the expo on Tuesday, Michael Nolan, chief for the County of Renfrew Paramedic Service, made opening remarks thanking all the paramedic responders, firefighters and police who helped to save and treat everybody.

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak was also at the conference with the Eagle Heart singers and drummers to open the expo. The drummers and Nepinak honoured Carlson by bringing him on stage and giving him blessings.

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