Courtesy-Service-Protection:

Search teams were organized to locate and treat survivors of the crash.  Kelly Hindman was asked to lead one of the teams.  “I had a group of people with me and we came upon an airliner bench seat sitting right on the ground with three people strapped in it, all dead.  There were some other bodies, badly burnt, maybe a dozen or so.  I had to get kind of stern with my team members as they stopped and were gawking at the bodies.  I told them, ‘We’re not here to look at dead people.  We need to find people who are hurt and may need our help.’  So we continued on, but didn’t find any badly injured people.  There were plenty of walking wounded and they were just stunned and we directed them toward the emergency crews. 

One of the survivors somehow made his way to Trooper Jay Smith’s location.  “I noticed a man walking my way on Harbor Drive from the north.  He walked up to me very slowly as if he didn’t want to bother me.  He then said rather calmly that he was a survivor from the plane.  I looked at this man who appeared close to me in age and thought he couldn’t be telling me the truth.  He was calm, his clothes were intact, as if he were going to church, no smoke stains, no cuts, no bruises, no nothing.  He seemed like one of the pedestrians I had been instructing to leave the area.  I had him show me some identification and he calmly produced a Kansas driver’s license identifying him as Jerry Schemmel.  It was then I realized that he was, in fact, a passenger.  I felt horrible!  I apologized to him and put my hand on his shoulder in a show of some sort of compassion.  We were not that far from the terminal and I still had to control the intersection, so I pointed him in the direction of the terminal.  That was the last I saw of him as he began walking.”

Later that night, after getting home about 4 a.m., Jay Smith had his TV on watching the news coverage of the accident.  “I turned the channel and noticed a story that was being reported of a passenger that had gone back into the burning fuselage and saved a baby.  They flashed a picture of him on the screen and I immediately recognized that it was the survivor, Jerry Schemmel, who had walked up to me.  I was impressed that he had the courage to do what he did.  After rescuing the baby, he handed it to some bystanders and worked his way through the cornfields eventually meeting up with me.  On the day of the crash, Jerry was just 28 years old and was the deputy commissioner of the Continental Basketball Association.  The Commissioner, Jay Ramsdel, was also on the plane but didn’t make it.  Jerry went on later in life to become the head broadcaster for the NBA’s Denver Nuggets.”

(A few years later, Trooper Smith and Passenger Schemmel were reunited during a book signing for Schemmel’s book Chosen to Live describing the crash .  Smith wanted to apologize for not offering him more help following the crash, but Schemmel, after recognizing the Trooper, said “You don’t have to do that.  You were busy.  You really had your hands full that day.”)

Kelly Hindman was still at the accident scene.  “They had all the injured people cleared out in about 45 minutes.  They left the dead bodies there overnight for the NTSB investigators.  It was after midnight before they let us go.  My wife had no idea where I was and I had about a four or five hour turnaround time before going back for my next shift.”

The flight made national headlines even before the crash as the world had watched the crew struggle heroically to bring the damaged plane to a safe landing.  Hundreds of media personnel and their vehicles converged on western Iowa.  In the days following the incident, the Patrol helped maintain security while federal investigators searched for clues about the circumstances that caused the damage to the aircraft. 

Mike Van Berkum recalled, “We worked 15-hour days for four or five days and we changed the colors of  the ID badges each day.  We caught some private detective trying to sneak his way in.” 

Kelly Hindman recalled, “The mass media was there in force – everywhere. One photographer hired a helicopter to fly him over the crash site so he could get pictures.  When he landed we confiscated his equipment.  He was very cooperative.  After all the bodies were removed, they took the press out to the site on buses.  The family members of the victims arrived, wondering where to go.  We directed them and they kept thanking us.”

Jay Smith added, “I was amazed that I was seeing so many survivors.  112 people died on United Flight 232.  Miraculously, 184 survived.  Two years prior to the crash, there had been a drill done at the airport in case of just such an emergency.  Lots of valuable information was gained from this drill.