Joshua Faine could hear people screaming from inside the burning Korean Air Flight 801 in the early hours of Aug. 6 as he was lowered to the wreckage.
One of the first rescuers at the scene in Guam, the Hamilton native searched among the charred debris for survivors, hoisting their burned, broken bodies into helicopters to be taken to area hospitals.
As a Navy petty officer, Mr. Faine had practiced rescues over and over during training at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam. In January 1995, he had saved three scuba divers from crashing against a reef.
But Mr. Faine never thought he would see something like this.
"Most of them were burned beyond belief," said Mr. Faine, 24. "Some didn't have any skin . . . A lot of them were so messed up, there was nothing we could do . . . We just had to get them out of there."
Mr. Faine and about 15 others pulled 35 people from the jumbo jet, which slammed into a hillside at about 2 a.m. as it approached the Agana International Airport. Seven of the victims would later die.
Mr. Faine remembers the carnage, the smell of burning flesh. He remembers the rush to get people who were still alive into helicopters, which were hovering nearby in pitch-blackness and rain.
"I started thinking, 'if we have to lift these people one by one, they're going to die. It was just taking too long," Mr. Faine said.
So, he found a nearby clearing and helped direct the helicopters there. By 11 a.m., the last survivors were airlifted out.
"There was one survivor we pulled out, he was really burned," Mr. Faine, 24, said. "He looked up at me, we made eye contact.
"That's when I stepped back and realized these people have families, some were here on vacation. That's when it all came into perspective."
Mr. Faine's wife, Melinda, 22, had returned to Hamilton from the base, where she had been living, two weeks before the crash. She saw the rescue operation on television after the crash.
"I saw the helicopters - his squadron has the only rescue helicopters on the island - so I knew he was involved," she said.
Forty-eight hours later, he called.
"It takes a lot to shake my husband up, and he was pretty shaken up," she said. "He sounded kind of mortified. He said he'd seen things he'd never dreamed of. It was something he'd never forget."
Mrs. Faine looks forward to her husband's homecoming Sept. 3. Mr. Faine, who entered the Navy at the age of 19 to raise money for college, has enrolled at Miami University in Hamilton, where he will pursue a nursing degree.
Talking about the crash has helped Mr. Faine deal with it.
"But I still see it every now and then, and every once in a while, I smell it," he said.
"It was like a bad, bad dream."
