Gil Blinn is back home after stitches and surgery following an accident last Tuesday, Feb. 1, when his plane, a Cessna 182, got away from him.
The incident started about 11 a.m. when Gil was attempting to start his plane. In the cold, near-freezing temperature, his battery wouldn’t turn over and start the engine. He set the emergency brake and set the throttle at idle and attempted to “hand-prop” the plane’s engine. He got it started, and ran back to the cockpit where he advance the throttle for more power, but again the engine died.
He went back to again crank the prop, but forgot to pull back the opened throttle, so that when the engine again came to life, it overpowered the emergency brake and set the plane on its course down the runway. Gil ran to the cockpit to try to pull back the throttle, but “the plane simply got away from me.”
Gil hit his face on the metal steps of the landing gear, and then fell to the pavement. He looked up to see the plane hit the corner of the hangar. He ran to the plane and turned off the key, noticing that the plane was leaking fuel.
He also noticed that he was bleeding. His friend and fellow pilot Dave Ecklund came along, and took Gil to Dr. Shinstrom’s office, where Gil called his wife Karen and the Fire Department, which had already come across the unattended plane at the airport to drain the fuel away.
Emergency medics flew Gil and Karen to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Bellingham, where they stitched up Gil’s lacerations below and above his right eye. The next day he met with an oral surgeon to see if his broken cheekbone (“my first broken bone,” Gil says) needed surgery. Following that surgery to shore up his occipital bone and a night in the hospital, Gil and Karen came home on Thursday evening.
“The outpouring of concern and help from the community was so wonderful,” Gil says. “It’s uplifting. We owe so much to so many — Dave Ecklund, the clinic, the EMTs the Fire Department and AirLift, the medical folks at the hospital, Bishop Craig Anderson, who came to see me at the hospital.
“And Karen’s halo is shining bright.”
Although his plane is wrecked, Gil says he will fly again.
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