A routine test flight turned into a swamp rescue on Monday, Oct. 12, near Sextonville. Pilot Peter A. Aarsvold, 67, of Verona, was flying a single-engine plane on its maiden test flight when it went down shortly after 1 p.m. into a marsh south of U.S. Highway 14, behind a home in rural Richland County, according to the Richland County Sheriff's Office.
Aarsvold was trapped in the cockpit and stayed on the phone with dispatchers while rescuers pushed about 700 feet through thick swamp, guided by his cell phone GPS and a sheriff's drone overhead. Crews freed him from the wreckage, but the bog was too deep and soft to carry him all the way out the way they had come in.
That is where Wisconsin DNR Conservation Warden Mike Williams came in. Williams, an experienced airboat operator stationed in Richland County, launched his DNR airboat with a sheriff's deputy riding as co-pilot and steered through the muddy, weedy swamp, following directions from a lieutenant watching the drone feed.
Williams loaded the pilot and a responder aboard and ferried them to the staging area, where Aarsvold — conscious and alert — was treated and then airlifted to a hospital. Williams then turned around and went back, transporting three firefighters who needed hospital care for dehydration in the roughly 85-degree heat and making more trips to bring out fire personnel, deputies and heavy gear.
Richland Center Fire Chief Scott Gald praised Williams' expert maneuvering, noting that he unloaded the airboat into a cornfield and got through the cattails and bog to reach the scene. Williams credited the DNR's warden boat training course for his ability to handle an airboat in the most challenging situations.
