BOSTON -- Thirty years ago, 10 people's lives were forever changed. They were all on Air New England Flight 248, en route from New York to Hyannis when they crashed into the woods of Cape Cod. Nine of them would live to talk about it, but none have until now.

NewsCenter 5's Liz Brunner sat down with two local survivors who said the pilots made the announcement that they were going to be landing in 10 minutes, and that was the last thing they heard from the cockpit.

That was June 17, 1979, just after 11 p.m. The weather was bad and visibility was practically nonexistent because of fog.

"There was no warning at all," said Dr. Paul Boepple, one of the men on board. "We hit the trees at about 140 mph. The sound of it was like nothing I'd ever heard. It was like being inside a grinder as the plane is being chewed up by the trees," said passenger Bob Sabbag.

The wings broke off and the plane skidded to an abrupt halt.

Air New England Flight 248 had eight passengers and two crew members on board when they crashed deep into the woods of Camp Greenough in Yarmouthport, about 2 ½ miles from the Barnstable Airport. They feared nobody knew where they were or that the plane had even crashed.

"You couldn't breathe through the smell of jet fuel. We were soaked in it," Sabbag said.

Fearing an inferno, they knew they had to get out of the airplane as soon as possible.

Sabbag said he remembers thinking, that "If I'm going to live or die, it's up to me."

Author Sabbag's first book, "Snow Blind," was No. 1 on the bestseller list 30 years ago. He said his latest book, "Down Around Midnight," is a personal account of this crash and the survival of nine of the people on board. Sabbag contacted five of his fellow passengers and their stories are woven together in the book.

Sabbag said the book was difficult to write at times.

"I was reluctant to call my fellow passengers and ask them to tamper with the equilibrium that they might have achieved," he said.

Suzanne Mourad was the first passenger Sabbag contacted. He calls her the hero of the night. Perhaps the least injured, it was Mourad who found her way through the swamps and trees to get help. Sabbag said many of the passengers were so injured they couldn't move.

"We were waiting for ambulances and sirens," Sabbag said. "But not only was there not help in the outside world in the way of sirens, there was no help coming from the forward part of the airplane."

Pilot George Parmenter died on impact. His co-pilot was in clinical shock, his life saved only because of Jonathon Ealy. Ealy was the quarterback for the Harvard University football team. He wasn't wearing his seat belt, and as a result was thrown through the broken out windshield. With just a broken nose and a few scratches, he was able to stay with the co-pilot and help keep him alive.

Boepple is now a pediatric endocrinologist at Mass General Hospital. At the time of the crash, he was a third-year medical student and the only one with any medical training on board. He too was injured.

"One eye was swollen shut, the other eye was OK," he said. He remembers trying to pry open that eye lid to make sure he could still see out his eye.

Sabbag, on the other hand, was more injured. He had broken his back and worried he might never walk again. Yet, these two men managed to pull everyone else off the plane while they waited in the woods for two hours help to arrive.

They were rescued, thanks to Mourad's efforts to get help, but after they were rescued from the woods, they never saw each other ever again until Sabbag called them about the book.

"Down Around Midnight" rekindled many faded memories.

"I survived," Sabbag said. "It's very difficult to think of yourself as anything but lucky in a situation like this."

A National Transportation Safety Board investigation would later determine that pilot error was to blame for the cause of the crash.

There were many unknown connections and unusual coincidences among passengers and crew that are told in the book, including that Sen. Ted Kennedy was on that very same plane on the previous flight.

"Down Around Midnight" is available in bookstores.