Mar 19, 2014 3 min read

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – An hourslong rescue effort bulldozing and cutting through thick brush and dense terrain is being credited with saving the lives of three people whose plane crashed atop a mountain in East Tennessee.

The single-engine plane carrying three people from Ohio crashed atop Holston Mountain Tuesday night a little more than 20 minutes after loading up for fuel in an airport in Elizabethton, Tenn., Carter County Sheriff Chris Mathes said.

“For what these folks have been through, it’s really a miracle they survived,” Mathes said.

The pilot has been identified as Scott Miller from Orville, Ohio. The sheriff identified the passengers as Andrea Denning of Dalton, Ohio, and her 15-year-old son. The teenager’s name was not released. All were taken to Johnson City Medical Center, the sheriff said, but the boy has since been released.

He said the conditions of the pilot and the mother have been downgraded from critical to serious.

The Cessna 172 aircraft took off from Charleston, S.C., Tuesday and was headed back home to Ohio when it began running low on fuel, Mathes said. The plane stopped at the airport in Mountain City to get fuel but there wasn’t any to be had there, the sheriff said. Records show the plane was able to purchase fuel from the Elizabethton Airport shortly after 7 p.m. Tuesday.

The teen is believed to have been the one who made the 911 call about 7:30 p.m. Tuesday after the plane crashed and landed on an area of the mountain that is 3,000 feet high, the sheriff said. Getting to the victims would prove to be challenging because the forested terrain was too dense for a helicopter to land.

Rescue workers bulldozed through thick brush and used chainsaws to cut a path two-and-a-half miles up the mountain, finally reaching the first victim just after 2 a.m., the sheriff said. At one point the bulldozer slid down the side of the mountain and got stuck, he said.

Because the bulldozer had already slid, they were fearful of carrying the victims out on all-terrain vehicles. So rescue workers carried the three on backboards and walked them down the other side of the mountain until they could get to terrain flat enough to where the ATVs could be used, Mathes said.

The plane is owned by Skypark Inc., a private airport and aviators club in Wadsworth, Ohio.

One of the club’s pilots had rented the plane to go to South Carolina on Saturday, Skypark treasurer Joel Kull said. The pilot, Kull said, had been waiting for good weather to come home and stopped to refuel.

Federal authorities have been called to investigate the cause of the crash.