Unlatching his seat belt, Dan Liljenquist dropped to the roof of the plane, lying upside down in a field.

Sunlight through the door, which had been torn off on impact, splashed across his hands. His legs were numb, so badly twisted he could look down and see the tread on his boot.

"I'm alive," the Bountiful man said aloud, again and again as wisps of smoke seeped into the plane. "I'm alive."

It's been a year since a plane crash in the jungle of Guatemala killed 11 people, nine of them on a humanitarian mission to build a classroom in a remote schoolhouse, and left three others fighting for their lives.

Today, the survivors of that crash are still coping with the scars, physical and emotional, and remembering their friends who perished.

On Saturday, about 280 friends and supporters in Roy and in Rock Falls, Ill., took part in a 4-mile memorial run to raise money for the scholarship funds established in the names of the dead.

In June, a new school was opened, named after Javier and Walfred Rabanales, the Guatemalan coordinators of the West Jordan-based CHOICE Humanitarian program.

In the field near Cabanas where the plane went down, a plaque will be placed atop a stone marker this week to commemorate the tragedy. And in Illinois, the family of Lydia Silva, including her two young children, placed a headstone this week commemorating her.

"The anniversaries of any tragedy are always difficult. It has just been very, very difficult for them to accept and then there are the constant reminders," said Alan Mortensen, an attorney for several of the victims' families. "The reality sets in that these folks aren't coming home."

For Liljenquist, his brush with death, which for the most part he has refused to discuss publicly, has given him a newfound focus in life.

"For those families, I just try to make it count," he said. "I just try to make my life count for something. I just feel like I owe that to my friends."

A perfect day » Fourteen people, including two pilots, boarded the Cessna Caravan 208 on the morning of Aug. 24, 2008, bound for a remote town in the high mesa on the shores of Lake Izabal.

They had come to add a classroom to a schoolhouse there, a project that CHOICE Humanitarian had spearheaded and that Focus Services, a Roy, Utah-based call center, had worked on the prior two years.

It was a perfect day, mild and cloudless as they embarked on their journey.

Cody Odekirk, 19, of Ogden, who was learning to fly, sat behind the pilot. Next to him was Jeff Reppe, a motocross racer, wearing his sunglasses and a backward-turned baseball cap.

Odekirk and Reppe, along with Lydia Silva, a mother of two, were Focus employees who had won their spots on the trip by writing an essay explaining why they wanted to help.

The Jensen family - parents April and Roger and their children, Sarah and Zachary - had done fundraisers and saved money to take part in the service project.

Liljenquist, in a straw hat and sunglasses, sat in the back, next to his friend John Carter and Javier Rabanales.

Everyone was grinning and eager as the plane prepared for takeoff.

Dead quiet, then falling » The first sign of trouble came about 40 minutes into the flight. The pilot fidgeted with switches and the engine surged and revved. "Oh no," he said. "Oh no."

Odekirk yelled over his shoulder that they had lost oil pressure and smoke began to rush past the right side of the cabin.

Then, a wrenching shudder as the engine crunched to a stop.

"It was just dead quiet. Just noise, then silence and you could just hear the wind passing over the wing," said Liljenquist. "Then we began to fall I could see the jungle, so then the realization comes: You're going to die."

The plane banked and leveled, banked and leveled, gliding and falling as the pilot searched for a clearing to land.

"It was the things I thought about that I would miss," Liljenquist said through tears. "It's my 2-year-old learning how to talk and that really fun age. That's what I thought about mostly on the way down."

The plane nearly clipped a hillside and Liljenquist slid down in his seat, legs straight, preparing for impact.

Carter and Liljenquist tried to reassure each other. "His last words to me were, 'If it's our time, it's our time.'"

'Not today' » Crumpled on his side on the roof of the plane, Liljenquist found his friend, Carter, on his back, pinned under wreckage. Liljenquist tried to lift it off, but as he pushed, the bones in his mangled legs slipped, twisting his dislocated and shattered ankles.

Smoke was seeping in and April Jensen, strapped into her seat, hanging upside down, moaned that the plane was burning, just as a fireball shot through the cabin.

Liljenquist tried to scramble outside but again the broken bones in his legs gave way. He rolled onto his back and pulled his knees to his chest, then crawled toward the door on his hands and knees. "Not today," he said. "Today is not my day."

He was halfway out the door when two farmers in straw hats dragged him away from the plane, the leg of his pants burning, laid him in the field and went back to help April Jensen.

Lying on his side, Liljenquist could see the flames in the charred plane, his friends inside. Unable to watch, he reached for his cell phone and began flipping through photos of his wife and five children as the pain from his shattered and burned legs set in.

"It's just pain," he told himself. "You get to see your kids again."

An explosion blew through the plane, then another, tearing it apart and sending people scrambling.

'They're all dead' »' Looking back, Liljenquist says, he is overwhelmed by the acts of kindness and sacrifice he saw that day.

He remembers the woman who held his hand, as he bounced down a rutted, rocky road, 45 minutes to the nearest hospital. He had no medicine to dull the pain and over each bounce his limp legs would careen side to side, grinding bone against bone. All he could do was clench her hand.

Curious residents came out to watch the ambulances, carrying April and Sarah Jensen, Liz Johnson and Liljenquist, arrive at the bright yellow hospital, and they snapped pictures.

Liljenquist called his wife, but got voice mail.

"Brooke, we've been in an accident, and they're all dead," he said in his message. "I think I'm going to be OK.' I said, 'John's dead, Cody's dead, Jeff is dead, Lydia's dead.' I said, 'They're taking me into surgery. I'll call you later.' "

The patients were stabilized and flown by helicopter to a hospital in Guatemala City, where Liz Johnson, a mother of three from Cottonwood Heights and wife of a CHOICE Humanitarian executive, died from burns and injuries suffered in the crash.

Aftermath » April Jensen spent two months in a Minnesota hospital recovering from the burns she suffered when flames shot through the plane.

The orphaned Rabanales children received visas to study in Utah - two are attending Waterford Academy and the oldest, Josue, is on a Mormon mission in Honduras.

Pam Reppe has coped with the pain by organizing fundraisers for the scholarship honoring her son. Ron Reppe misses his son's companionship and their shared love of motorcycles. The anniversary of the crash has proven emotionally challenging for both.

The survivors of the crash and families of the victims have sued the companies that manufactured and maintained the engine on the Cessna and the Guatemalan charter company that operated the flight.

"The depth of this tragedy is probably incomprehensible to the average person," said Mike Slack, an attorney representing several of the families. "These were all families there to do good, they were all there to make life better for some underprivileged people in Guatemala and their lives were tragically ripped apart and family units were destroyed."

The investigation of the crash by Guatemalan authorities is ongoing.

Liljenquist, now a state senator, spent five weeks in a wheelchair and hospital bed in his home recuperating. A titanium rod and screws hold the bones in his legs in place. He walks with a limp and is still undergoing physical therapy, but knows he is lucky.

"It's hard to know why in life things happen," he says, tears welling in his eyes. "I guess the only thing, the only thing I've really been able to say other than to bear witness of these people's goodness is you just want to make it count."

gehrke@sltrib.com