Tampa Bay business leaders survive deadly crash on Alaskan fishing trip

Mark Mahaffey was about two minutes into a helicopter ride to an Alaskan fishing spot Saturday morning when he heard a thud.

The helicopter suddenly careened to the side and plunged into a river about 50 feet below.

“And we’re underwater, totally underwater,” Mahaffey said. “Just like the snap of your finger.”

Mahaffey fumbled with his seatbelt and fought the river’s strong current. He got out of the helicopter and swam about eight feet to the surface. Other heads bobbed around him, friends on his fishing party and the pilot.

But one man would not emerge from the wreckage.

Mahaffey, a St. Petersburg business leader and philanthropist whose family name adorns the Mahaffey Theater, was one of four people who survived the harrowing crash.

The man who died, Martin de Laureal, 73, was a close friend of Mahaffey’s who lived next door to his North Carolina summer home, from where Mahaffey recounted the ordeal in a phone interview with the Tampa Bay Times on Tuesday.

The Alaska fishing trip had become a five-time tradition that he and his son, Tom, and a group of friends celebrated around Mahaffey’s birthday.

Given Mahaffey’s age (he turned 80 this weekend) and the rigor the trip required, this was expected to be their last one.

“We called this trip ‘One More Time,’ because it’s a strenuous trip,” Mahaffey said. “I’ve got one more in me, and this was it.”

On Saturday morning, Tom and several other friends took a plane to the fishing spot’s base camp, which is on Nakalilok Bay in the Alaska Peninsula National Wildlife Refuge.

Mark Mahaffey and three others took the helicopter along with the pilot. They settled in for an hour-long flight before the group would camp and fish for silver salmon over the next week.

“It’s just absolutely beautiful,” Mahaffey said. “You fish this tidal bay, and then you fish about three other rivers.”

Mahaffey looked at his watch at 9:17 a.m. when the helicopter took off from King Salmon Airport on the Naknek River. Conditions were foggy, but Mahaffey said he could clearly see the ground below.

After the crash, he reached around to his left side, unbuckled his seat belt and swam for the open door. A friend who was buckled next to him, Mike Bonsignore, 83, emerged right after.

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Next was the problem of staying afloat. Mahaffey was clambering toward the shore, weighed down by heavy clothes and boots, when a flotation device appeared in front of him.

“I don’t know where this cushion came from, whether it came from the helicopter or maybe a rescue boat,” he said. “Or, maybe, God threw it down.”

Alaska State Troopers said good Samaritans on the river helped pull crash survivors from danger. Mahaffey’s rescue is a blur, he told the Times, but he remembered that rescue boats finally arrived to pluck him from the waters.

“All I know is we ended up in that rescue station onshore,” he said.

Meanwhile, the helicopter’s pilot worked to save the others still underwater. He dragged Fred Razook, founder of a St. Petersburg mortgage banking firm, from the helicopter by his leg, then dove again to try to rescue de Laureal.

When he surfaced, de Laureal wasn’t with him.

Alaska State Troopers confirmed that de Laureal died in the accident.

“I feel so bad and sad for his wife, Evelyn, and their three sons and their families,” Mahaffey said. “It’s not easy to deal with.”

He first met de Laureal, a prominent New Orleans business leader, when he moved next door to Mahaffey’s summer home in Highlands, North Carolina. They had grown close over the past three years.

Mahaffey said he feels lucky to be alive and unscathed — he suffered bruises on one eye and his right abdomen.

“We lost one dear friend, but at least the three of us got out,” Mahaffey said. “It was just a miracle.”

In the days since the crash, Razook, 75, has relived in his mind the 15 seconds he was trapped underwater and running out of air.

“And I thought, ‘I’m not going to get out of here,’ because I couldn’t unlatch it,” he said.

Razook said he was on “his last breath” when he was saved by the pilot. He guessed he was treading water for at least 10 minutes before rescue boats arrived.

Clint Johnson, Alaska chief of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the helicopter was a Bell 206B, also called a Jet Ranger, operated by Egli Air Haul out of King Salmon.

The helicopter was cleared to depart under Special Visual Flight Rules, meaning aircraft can leave the airport in unfavorable weather. Johnson said visibility was down to about a quarter-mile at the time of the crash.

Investigators pulled the aircraft from the river Monday after finding it flipped upside down underwater just a quarter-mile south of the airport, Johnson said.

The cause of the crash is unknown, and Johnson said a team was still onsite Tuesday afternoon.

Razook doesn’t believe the crash was pilot error, but he wonders what caused the helicopter to go down.

“That’s the one big question that we have in our minds,” he said.