“I just sprang into action as quickly as possible,” Rebecca Liquori, a registered nurse, tells PEOPLE
Credit: courtesy of Rebecca Liquori
NEED TO KNOW
- A registered nurse survived the fatal plane crash at New York’s LaGuardia Airport and rushed to help an injured man
- With another passenger’s assistance, she opened the emergency exit door to let people out
- “People were working together,” Rebecca Liquori tells PEOPLE
In the aftermath of the plane crash at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, a registered nurse on board recalls rushing to open the emergency exit and get off the plane as soon as possible.
“People were working together,” Rebecca Liquori, 35, tells PEOPLE of surviving the deadly crash between Air Canada Express Flight 8646 and a firetruck on Sunday, March 22.
“I think that made the situation better than it could have been,” she says of the sense of camaraderie that lessened the horror of experiencing such a “tragic event.”
As the passenger jet landed that night, it struck a firetruck responding to another situation, crumpling the front of the plane in the high-force collision.
Two pilots died in the crash, a Port Authority spokesperson previously confirmed to PEOPLE. They have since been identified as Capt. Antoine Forest and First Officer Mackenzie Gunther.
Thirty-nine passengers on the plane and two firefighters on the firetruck were transported to a hospital, although many have already been released.
As aviation officials continue to investigate the incident, survivors are sharing details about those fatal moments.
For Liquori, her flight from Montreal to New York City had already been delayed multiple times. The mom of two — who was traveling back from a cousin’s baby shower — wanted to get home to her two young sons in Long Island before work the next day.
At the beginning of the flight, Liquori was seated in the emergency exit row. Though she was tired from the long weekend, she didn’t hesitate when the flight attendant asked if she was able to open the exit door in a crisis.
“I watched her do it and I said, ‘Yeah, I could do it,’ ” she says. “Not thinking that I would have to utilize it 50 minutes later.”
The airplane ride was “smooth” at first. Liquori was sleeping when the plane began its descent, which is when heavy turbulence hit.
“The plane was just rocking back and forth as we were trying to land,” the medical professional recalls. Anxiety amongst passengers went up further as the flight crew urged everyone to keep their seatbelts on. The landing was “rough,” causing the jet to “jolt,” Liquori says.
She remembered hearing a "grinding noise" and "then three seconds later, the collision happened.”
Credit: courtesy of Rebecca Liquori
Once she realized something was wrong, she says she began thinking of her two sons, her husband and her parents that she may never see again.
“I thought, ‘This is it for me,’ ” the nurse remembers thinking.
Following the crash, passengers “were lurched out of our seats” and didn’t know what had occurred. It was only later that Liquori would learn that a flight attendant at the front of the plane had been ejected from the aircraft and was found still strapped into her jump seat.
As for what she did next, Liquori "just sprang into action as quickly as possible," which included helping a man with a head wound.
Liquori saw that a man seated next to the emergency exit had “busted his head open” during the crash and was bleeding, so she found napkins in her bag and gave them to him to staunch the cut.
Credit: courtesy of Rebecca Liquori
The urgency to exit the plane permeated the cabin, she says, remembering passengers saying, “We have to get out of here."
Liquori worked with another female passenger to open the emergency exit door to let people out, while a man opened the other emergency exit.
“We got it out the way and people were running out, jumping off the wing,” she says.
There was no emergency slide on the aircraft, so Liquori and other passengers evacuated themselves with guidance from emergency personnel on the ground.
Once safely on the runway, Liquori let another woman use her phone to contact her frantic loved ones. Meanwhile, Liquori's husband was already on the way to the airport when he got an SOS alert that was sent from her iPhone.
“There was a 15-minute stretch of time where he wasn't sure what happened to me,” she says.
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Liquori, who ended up going to the hospital later that morning and is continuing to seek medical care, tells PEOPLE she feels grateful for what she calls her "second chance" to "just be a mom."
“I'm going to do everything I can…with the life that I've been given,” she adds.
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