Kenny Brown and his deckhand were working on the First Street dock when they watched the plane come in.
They watched in shock as the plane crashed into a water taxi called Rocky Pass.
“The plane was coming in from right behind us here, and Rocky Pass was coming in at an angle here. Yeah, he impacted Rocky Pass, he didn’t see him,” Brown told CHEK News.
The plane started sinking fast. So Brown and his deckhand untied from the dock and rushed to help.
When they got to the plane, the door opened a little boy appeared in the door.
“I extend my hand out, and then I tell this little boy, ‘OK, you’ve got to come towards me.’ So he comes towards me,” he told Global News. “I get him aboard, and he’s shivering.”
Once he had the boy on his boat, Brown got the boy’s father and two other passengers on board and headed for shore. Someone else rescued the pilot and the water taxi driver. All were taken to hospital, but no one was seriously injured.
“It settled on me because, that boy I helped peel out of the plane and survive, I have a boy that age,” Brown told CHEK News.
It’s not the first time Brown has been a hero on the water.
The Ahousat man was also on the spot on Oct. 25, 2015, when the Leviathan II whale-watching boat sank. It had 27 people aboard when it was hit by a rogue wave and went under.
Kenny Brown saved 11 people from drowning that day.
“Well, he is very brave,” Ahousaht elder Betty Keitlah told CHEK News. “He does what has to be done. He’s always there.”
“I’ve saved 15 people in my lifetime,” Brown said. “I saved 11 people on the Leviathan II. I saved four people last night. I keep asking why, why me?”
But he says he’s okay with the hero part.
“I soak it in when my kids call me a hero,” he told Global News. “I’ll hug them and say, ‘Yeah, your dad’s a hero.'”
