Queensland plane crash survivor cannot walk, facing lawsuits one year on
One year after his light plane crashed on landing at a Sunshine Coast airport, Ben Berg is yet to walk, the injured passengers are taking legal action against him and his insurance won't pay out.
Emergency services were three minutes away from amputating his legs in order to get him out of the wreckage and he was given nine pints of blood at the scene just to give him a chance of survival.
Mr Berg met the RACQ LifeFlight Rescue helicopter team who helped save his life this week, despite the medical experts who treated him believing he would not survive in the days after the crash.
On August 12, 2017, Mr Berg took off from the Gold Coast with his wife and flew to the Sunshine Coast to meet one of his two daughters for breakfast.
He took his daughter (Micayla), her boyfriend and her boyfriend's sister for a joyride upon arriving on the Sunshine Coast and then took some other family friends up for another scenic flight.
As he was coming into land on the second flight, disaster struck.
For legal reasons, Mr Berg cannot discuss what he believes went wrong, but the result of the failed landing that day at Caloundra Airport was the aircraft flipping upon impact and Mr Berg being trapped in the cockpit, barely conscious with critical injuries.
Mr Berg does remember waking up trapped in the wreckage of his South African-designed Sling 4 piston-engine kit plane.
"After the crash, I remember being inverted, in a lot of pain and bare wires hanging off the dashboard," he said.
"I also had chemicals burns and was soaked in fuel ... it was a miracle there were no sparks and fire.
"I broke my shoulder blade, my ribs were broken, I had gashes on my face ... I was a total mess.
"I asked the passenger in the co-pilot seat if he was alright but he didn't respond.
"I remember the sound of fire trucks and their equipment and then waking up in hospital."
Mr Berg was trapped in the wreckage of the aircraft for almost two hours. His passengers also suffered serious injuries as a result of the crash.
The RACQ LifeFlight Rescue helicopter paramedic was going to make the decision to amputate both Mr Berg's legs in order to free him if the extraction had taken just three more minutes.
Mr Berg also went into cardiac arrest in the wreckage and required nine pints of blood while trapped just to stay alive.
Even after he was freed and arrived at the hospital, doctors did not believe he would survive.
"I was in the Intensive Care Unit for a week. The first three or four days they didn’t think I was going to make it," he said.
"Then they were concerned I might have brain damage due to the blood loss.
"Eventually they woke me up and I didn’t have a clue where I was, I felt like I had been abducted by aliens.
"I also couldn’t breathe with the ventilator they had put in because both of my lungs had collapsed ... I was just choking, it was just terrible."
After coming out of a coma, the next steps were for Mr Berg to eat solid food again and survive several surgeries to try to repair his crushed legs.
The leg surgeries were successful, skin grafts were used to cover the chemical burns on Mr Berg's arms and chest and plastic surgery repaired the gashes on his body.
One of Mr Berg's legs was two inches shorter than the other after the crash due to the crush injuries, he joked that doctors had better fix it or he would "keep walking around in circles".
One year on from the crash, Mr Berg can stand, but cannot walk due to the extreme pain he feels because the bones in his legs haven't healed properly yet.
"I can stand, but I can’t transfer my weight onto one leg to walk, so I need a wheelchair," he said.
"I should probably start with physiotherapy and proper rehabilitation, but I'm just lacking in motivation."
Mr Berg said the physical, financial and emotional challenges he faces are daunting and the legal action he faces has compounded the situation.
"I haven't been allowed to move on, I've replayed everything every day with the constant statements I've given," he said.
"Emotionally, getting through this has been tough. There has also been a severe impact on my family, my wife took a real beating.
"My family were sitting outside the airport fence waiting for me when they heard the ambulances, fire trucks and the helicopter landing.
"The police eventually came and told them what had happened, but on their way to the hospital one of the hospital staff rang and told them they didn't think I was going to make it.
"My daughter also said that one day as I came out of surgery, I made eye contact with her but didn't recognise her, I don't remember that due to the number of drugs I had been given.
On Friday, Mr Berg met the RACQ LifeFlight Rescue helicopter team who helped to save his life.
"It was amazing to meet the people who saved my life, to see how they operate, look inside the helicopter and hear their sequence of events, their thoughts and how they coped," he said.
"The main thing was the mess I was in when they found me ... the crew said at the scene they didn’t think I was going to make it."
Looking ahead, Mr Berg hopes to walk again, get back to work using his electrical engineering qualifications and overcome the various legal and insurance issues he faces.