The good news was that Uta knew what she was buried by. The bad news was that it must have been three or four hundred pounds of luggage that a woman with a frame as small as hers had no chance of moving. The really bad news…the smoke was getting worse and the voices seemed to be getting farther away.

Paige Sobel

Paige Sobel had heard the explosion as well; from her window seat on the plane. Her son, Jared, had been sitting next to her and when the plane started to go down she had taken a motherly stance over the young boy. She had removed her seat belt and thrown herself over Jared, cradling him, hugging him, telling him everything was going to be fine even if she knew it might have been hopeless.

What happened next, though, she never could have guessed. A jagged piece of metal that must have been from one of the engines had torn off and skittered along the plane’s side, ripping holes into the cabin walls. The piece of metal had also busted out the window Paige had been sitting by, weakening the wall next to her even further. Her legs shook at the knees as the nose of the plane dipped down and she prayed for Jared, for herself, and that the wall would hold just a little while longer. The plane made another steep drop in altitude and luggage from the overhead racks toppled onto the passengers. The overhead oxygen masks deployed and she reached up to grab one for her son only to get slammed into by a large carry-on bag and be pushed back towards the shattered window behind her. The wall of the plane broke apart and Paige went with it.

The blonde fell about twenty feet to the ground, landing roughly on her stomach about the same time the plane crashed onto the island. The wind was knocked out of her but she got up anyway. Paige was trying to stand to get to Jared until that same piece of carry-on luggage fell from the sky and hit her in the side of the head.

She was unconscious for several seconds before her body made her wake up. Paige’s head was buried in the sand, face first, and water from the incoming tide was sloshing around her. It was wake up or drown and she was more than happy to take the first option, even if it brought with it the most massive headache she could imagine.