Baldwin resident and LaGuardia crash survivor Rebecca Liquori: 'Everybody just jolted out of their seats'

The flight from Montreal had been smooth until suddenly, there was a loud grinding noise, as the Air Canada passenger jet landed at LaGuardia Airport on Sunday night and then collided with a fire truck.

"A few seconds after that, you hear the collision and we just got jolted," said Rebecca Liquori, a nurse from Baldwin, in an interview with The New York Times. "We got thrown forward. And everybody's screaming."

The aircraft's two pilots were killed when the plane, which was carrying 70 passengers, struck a fire truck that was responding to an unrelated emergency, officials said. Forty-one passengers aboard the plane were transported to the hospital.

"Everybody just jolted out of their seats," Liquori told News 12 Long Island, where she previously worked, in an interview. "People hit their heads. People were bleeding."

Liquori, who went to Montreal for a family gathering, said fellow passengers worked together to help one another escape the plane for fear it would explode, by sliding down a wing.

"I’m just happy to be alive," Liquori said. "I would have never pictured a one-hour flight that I’ve done countless times ... ending like this."

Late Monday afternoon, her husband, Matthew Liquori, recalled how — with their two sons, 2 and 4, tucked in their beds — he headed to LaGuardia Airport Sunday night to pick up his wife.

As he approached the airport, he said, his wife’s phone sent him a "scary" alert that read "Crash Detected SOS Rebecca Liquori called emergency services from this approximate location."

He didn't hear from her for 20 minutes.

"It was pretty quick ... but in the moment it’s a long 20 minutes," said Matthew Liquori, 35.

Rebecca Liquori spent the weekend in Canada to attend a baby shower for her cousin, who will soon give birth to Liquori’s godchild, her husband told Newsday. When they finally reunited at the airport, she spoke not of her trip, but of how she handled herself during the tragedy.

"She was in the emergency seat, so she had to get the door open," Liquori said of his wife. "They all got off the plane, everyone who was OK enough to get off the plane. Then they were waiting around to get treated by some kind of medical staff."

Rebecca Liquori, 35, went to a hospital Monday afternoon for an additional checkup, her husband said, to ensure she did not have a concussion, tears or other injuries "that adrenaline might hide," he added.

"She was OK, definitely grateful and happy to make it out of it," Liquori said. "It’s pretty tough when stuff like that happens, the heart sinks. It’s scary, but I’m glad she’s OK and just glad she’s alive. ... You know we have two kids."

In addition to listening to his wife recount the terrifying moments of the crash and the aftermath, Liquori heard from total strangers about how she helped them.

"I am really proud of her," he said. "Some people were saying that she saved their lives because she was the one that got the emergency door open. ... They had to like walk down the wing, people were saying she was helping with that."

Jack Cabot, who also was aboard the flight, told Fox News it was an uneventful flight before the crash.

"As we were arriving, we came down really hard," Cabot said. "We stopped really quickly, two seconds later, we had an absolute slam. ... Everybody was flying everywhere. The plane veering off left and right. It was chaos. It didn’t feel like there was anybody controlling it."

Veteran flight attendant Solange Tremblay was ejected from the plane. She was still strapped into her seat, which was found more than 100 yards from the plane.

"It's a complete miracle," said her daughter Sarah Lépine, who spoke to Quebec’s TVA News. "She had a guardian angel watching over her. It could have been much worse."

Lépine said her mother was hospitalized with multiple bone fractures, including a broken leg.

Some travelers learned of the tragedy while waiting for their flights to take off.

Marco Alcantara, 25, of Chicago, said he was aboard the 9 p.m. United Airlines flight that a Port Authority emergency vehicle was responding to for what was described as a suspicious odor.

Alcantara’s plane was instead evacuated.

It was when they were off their plane and waiting at a gate that Alcantara and his fellow passengers learned of the other plane's crash.

He said other passengers were frustrated at first to learn of their flights being canceled, but the tone of the airport became more serious once travelers learned of the fatalities.

"It's surreal that you're going through this," he told Newsday while lying on the floor of Terminal B. "It’s a little scary."

Alcantara said he and his friend spent the night in Terminal B. Their flight to Chicago had been rescheduled for Monday afternoon, he said.

Newsday's Nicholas Grasso and Maureen Mullarkey contributed to this story.

By Nicole Fuller

nicole.fuller@newsday.com@NicoleFuller

Nicole Fuller is Newsday's senior criminal justice reporter. She began working at Newsday in 2012 and previously covered local government.