TWO WINGS AND A PRAYER: 'I lost my shoes, but I've got my life'

This was Debbie Ramsey's second flight ever. Her first

was the flight Monday from her home in Tennessee to New York City for a

business trip.

The district manager for a women's clothing company was in seat 13A. She

escaped to a wing, losing her shoes, then called her husband.

"I said, 'Oh, my God, I'm in the river,'" she said, standing in the US

Airways terminal at LaGuardia last night in socks, pajama bottoms - her jeans

were soaked - and wrapped in a Red Cross blanket.

Ramsey, 48, said her husband was driving to New York and they would drive

home together to Tennessee.

"I lost my shoes, but I've got my life, and that's all that matters," she

said.

But, she said, she's "never flying again."

Clay Presley, 54, from Charlotte, N.C., had seat 15D. He owns a school

supply company and was in New York for a business meeting. He was staying the

night at the LaGuardia Crowne Plaza and planned to take a US Airways flight

home today.

He said there was a "big bang sound" as the first engine went, "and the

plane shuddered.

"Everybody got very quiet." Then, he said, after about 30 seconds, the

other engine went out and the pilot told passengers to prepare for impact. "It

was the longest 30 seconds of your life," Presley recalled.

He said after what felt like three hard impacts, the plane settled into the

water. Exit row passengers disembarked calmly, opening the side doors and

inflating rafts.

He said he and other passengers were on one of the wings for about 20

minutes, that it was very slippery and that they were "frozen over" after about

a minute.

Passenger Bill Elkin spoke about his ordeal as he walked into the Crowne

Plaza hotel near LaGuardia, a Red Cross blanket draped around his shoulders.

"I was thinking: This can't be it. This can't be the end. It's just like,

if you've ever been in a car wreck, it seemed to take so long, but it happened

really fast.

"Once it hit, I remember just trying to get out of the plane ... and the

water was coming into the plane really fast. I could feel it running over the

top of my feet and that's really what scared me. I thought, 'I survived the

impact and now I'm going to drown.'"