Then, to his surprise, he felt a hand on his shoulder and a man's voice saying "Russ, it's time to go". The next thing he knew he was out of the cockpit and sitting on the ground beside the plane, still on fire. But instead of trying to put himself out, he ran around the plane trying to find the man who had helped him out. But there was no-one there.

Russ gave up trying to find his rescuer and ran a hundred yards to a creek, which he threw himself into. Since he had crashed in a deeply rural area, there was no-one around him to help, so, terribly burned, he set off down the road to try to find help. By this point all of his clothes had been burned off him apart from his underpants, cowboy boots and flying helmet.

After a few minutes, a pickup truck pulled up beside him driven by an old Hutterite farmer who uttered the immortal words: "Are you the guy from that plane?"

When Russ's wife Bonnie arrived at the hospital, she was told Russ wasn't expected to make it through the night. He did, and spent the next 2 months in a morphine-induced coma. He was burned down to the bone in places, and lost much of his hands, and his face. But even then, his brush with death wasn't over. When he jumped into the creek he had contracted a rare fungal infection which kicked in just as he was coming out of danger from the burns, and almost killed him for a second time.

After a long battle with the FAA to allow him to fly with severe injuries to his hands, Russ is flying again, and has just passed an exam which will allow him to move up from cropdusters to twin engined cargo planes.

Russ has no regrets about the accident. "I found out what was important in life. And I know now that there's life after death. So I'm not frightened of dying. To tell you the truth, I'm happier now than I was before".