A 70-year-old survivor of the Makani Kai crash Wednesday said state Health Director Loretta Fuddy was conscious before he struck out to swim to Kalaupapa.

C. Phillip Hollstein Jr. said he helped everyone out of the plane, was the last one off, and recalls seeing Fuddy in the water.

Deputy Director Keith Yamamoto "was really watching over her," said Hollstein, an Oahu fire sprinkler company owner who flew on the same flight with Fuddy Wednesday morning to do repair work at Kalaupapa.

"She was fine when she first got out of the airplane," Hollstein said. "I was wondering if maybe she had a heart attack."

With everyone out of the plane, he helped an older mainland couple don and inflate their life vests.

"Everyone was out there bobbing like a cork in the water," and seemed to be doing OK, said Hollstein, who said he was a pilot, skydiver and former Army Special Forces soldier. "Everything was orderly," he said.

The plane had just taken off and was about a mile out when he heard a small bang, then the plane flew silently like a glider, Hollstein said.

The pilot managed to turn the plane toward the Kalaupapa runway and maintain his air speed, he said. "That pilot, he’s probably the main reason we’re all still here."

With the plane in the water, he said he and another passenger, Jake Key, tried to open the doors. Key got one open and everyone went out through it.

"It was not like in the movies with screaming and stuff," Hollstein said. "People were really good, helping each other," he said. "There was no panic."

The plane immediately filled with water, but was floating on its wings, he said.

Everyone was in their life vests, and surrounded the plane. "We stayed with it for a while, then when it started looking like it would sink," people moved away.

He said people began scattering and the current pulled them about a mile from the crash site.

Then he decided to swim to shore.

"I just kept swimming," he said, estimating it took 11⁄2 hours to get to the rocky shore. "I had a life vest on. I just figured I’d give it my best shot."

After fighting currents and swimming with his back to the waves to avoid water getting in his mouth, he reached the shore. With cuts on his arms and hands, he climbed on to the rocky beach and sat there, he said.

He watched as rescue personnel "started plucking them out of the water."

"I was real surprised when Fuddy did not make it," he said.

All the nurses and all residents at Kalaupapa came out to help.

"The whole darn settlement showed up," he said. They arrived with "blankets that felt real good. Everybody was helping. You couldn’t ask for a better bunch of people. Molokai is special, but they take it to another level. Everywhere, topside and down below."

Hawaii’s unforgiving winter waves will likely keep the Cessna Grand Caravan 208B that went down from being recovered, but a National Transportation Safety Board investigator sent to the scene Thursday is confident he can figure out what happened without examining the aircraft.

"(The investigator) did not believe that would be a huge roadblock in trying to figure out not only what happened, but why it happened and trying to prevent things like this from happening in the future," Eric Weiss, NTSB spokesman in Washington, D.C., said Thursday evening.

Weiss said that the agency frequently conducts crash investigations without aircraft and would "do a thorough and deep dive" into the evidence available.

"In this case we have witnesses to interview, so we continue our investigation," he said.

Eight passengers and a pilot were aboard the 42-foot, single-engine commuter plane when it crashed a mile off Kalaupapa around 3:30 p.m. Eight of them survived.

The pilot, who has been identified as Clyde Kawasaki, called Makani Kai’s owner, Richard Schuman, after the crash and told him that the aircraft suffered "catastrophic engine failure," Schuman said Thursday.

Schuman told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that the pilot reported hearing a bang before the engine failure, then had everybody put on life vests. He said the crash occurred soon after the plane took off and made its turn toward Honolulu.

The Coast Guard rescued three passengers and recovered Fuddy, while the Maui Fire Department rescued the remaining four passengers.

At a news conference Thursday at the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Barbers Point, Coast Guard officials said rescue efforts were seamless with the help of a Navy helicopter at the site. Petty Officer Third Class Mark Peer, one of the Coast Guard’s rescue swimmers, said the Navy dropped smoke flares into the water to mark the passengers’ locations.

"It was kind of a surreal scene," Peer said. "There was smoke coming out of the water everywhere. It made it so much easier for us to do our job. We really didn’t have to look for anybody. We were just able to get to work."

Peer said Fuddy was unresponsive when he reached her and had no pulse.

Fuddy, 65, was at Kalaupapa for the annual meeting of Hansen’s disease patients.

Yamamoto told the pastor of St. Francis Church at Kalaupapa on shore that Fuddy clung to his hand in the last few moments of her life.

"He recounted how he said he helped Loretta into her life jacket and he held her hand for some time," the Rev. Patrick Killilea said Thursday. "They were all floating together and she let go and there was no response from her."

Killilea said Yamamoto tried to help Fuddy relax, and that he later consoled Yamamoto. He also held a prayer service for Fuddy at the settlement’s care home before her body was taken to Molokai General Hospital.

Schuman declined to identify the pilot but said he has known him since 1996 and that he has been flying with Makani Kai for about a year. He previously flew for Aloha Airlines and other air carriers in Hawaii.

Killilea identified two additional crash survivors as Rosa Key, a Kalaupapa National Park Service administrator, and Key’s husband, Jake. A message on Key’s answering machine at Kalaupapa’s National Park Service office said she would be on vacation from Dec. 11 to Jan. 20.

Peer said he rescued an elderly man who was in stable condition about five minutes before he reached Fuddy.

"He was happy to see us," Peer said. "He grabbed my arm and gave me a thumbs up." After a basket hoisted the passenger to the helicopter, the pilot lowered Peer back toward the water and lifted Fuddy.

Petty Officer First Class PJ Ornot said he rescued an elderly man and a woman who appeared tired and was floating on her back. The man, he said, suffered a cut on his head.

Killilea described the scene at the airport as "hectic but calm" as nurses and people from the settlement attended to the eight survivors.

"That’s what happens here," he said. "Everyone was on board to help."

Schuman said he flew to Kalaupapa Wednesday, then returned to Honolulu to meet with the survivors.

The aircraft had a valid operating certificate. The company said it had never had an accident in its more than 20-year history.

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Star-Advertiser staff writers Rosemarie Bernardo and Sarah Zoellick, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.