ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Hundreds of people have offered to take in three orphaned brothers who survived a plane crash on a frigid mountainside and the boys’ condition was upgraded Wednesday from critical to serious.
Offers to provide a home for the Ferris boys — Ryan, 2, Jordan, 5, and Tyler, 10 — were pouring in, but Smith said they will live with relatives in upstate New York once they’re well enough to leave the hospital.
The family of seven was returning home to Swanzey, N.H., from a Florida vacation Sunday when their single-engine Piper Cherokee Six slammed into a snow-covered mountain in southwestern Massachusetts. Tayne Ferris and sons Shawn, 12, and Kyle, 9, died at the scene; the boys’ father, Ronald Ferris, died later from his injuries.
The boys’ grandparents, aunt and uncle have stayed with them since they arrived at the hospital, Smith said.
That made “a huge difference in their anxiety levels,” said Dr. Thomas Cohen, a pediatric trauma surgeon at Albany Medical Center Hospital. He said the boys are talking and have “captured everybody’s hearts” among the 60 to 75 medical staff involved in their care.