ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A pilot and his two young daughters survived on the wing of a plane for about 12 hours after it crashed and was partially submerged in an icy Alaska lake, then were rescued after being spotted by a good Samaritan.

Terry Godes said he saw a Facebook post Sunday night calling for people to help search for the missing plane, which did not have a locator beacon. On Monday morning about a dozen pilots including Godes headed out to scour the rugged terrain. Godes headed toward Tustumena Lake near the toe of a glacier and spotted what he thought was wreckage.

“It kind of broke my heart to see that, but as I got closer down and lower, I could see that there’s three people on top of the wing,” he told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

After saying a prayer, he continued to approach and saw a miracle.

“They were alive and responsive and moving around,” Godes said, adding that they waved at him.

The missing Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser, piloted by a man with two juvenile immediate family members aboard, was on a sightseeing tour from Soldotna to Skilak Lake on the Kenai Peninsula. It was not immediately clear how old the juveniles were.

In a social media post early Monday, John Morris implored people to help search for his son and granddaughters, saying they were late returning from a Sunday afternoon flight.

“There are friends ready to search at daylight. But this is my plea for any and all help to locate my family,” he wrote.

The three were rescued on the eastern edge of Tustumena Lake on Monday by the Alaska Army National Guard after Godes alerted other searching pilots that he had found it. Another pilot, Dale Eicher, heard Godes’ radio call and related it to troopers since he was closer to Skilak Lake and figured he had better cell reception. He was also able to provide the plane’s coordinates to authorities.

“I wasn’t sure if we would find them, especially because there was a cloud layer over quite a bit of the mountains, so they could have very easily been in those clouds that we couldn’t get to,” Eicher said. But finding the family alive within an hour of starting the search “was very good news.”

The three were taken to a hospital with injuries that were not considered life-threatening, Alaska State Troopers said.

Godes said many miracles were at play, from the plane not sinking, to the survivors being able to stay atop the wing, to them surviving nighttime temperatures dipping into the 20s (subzero Celsius).

“They spent a long, cold, dark, wet night out on top of a wing of an airplane that they weren’t planning on,” Godes said.

Alaska has few roads, leaving many communities to rely on small airplanes to get around.

Last month 10 people died when a small commuter plane that was overweight by half a ton crashed onto sea ice in the Norton Sound, near Nome on the state’s western coast.

And five years ago, a midair collision near the Soldotna airport claimed seven lives including that of a state lawmaker.

For this week’s rescue, the National Guard dispatched a helicopter from its base in Anchorage.

The initial plan of using a hoist to pluck them from the wing proved too dangerous, as the the smallest girl was being buffeted and blown around by the wind created by the helicopter, said Lt. Col. Brendon Holbrook, commander of the 207th Aviation Regiment. So instead the aircraft hovered to the side and pulled them on board.

Personnel reported that the girls were surprisingly dry but the man had been in the water at some point, Holbrook said: “We don’t know to what extent, but he was hypothermic.”

Holbrook said he was told they had basic clothing one would wear on small planes without very good heating systems, but nothing sufficient to keep warm outside in wintry temperatures with cold winds blowing on the lake.

“It was literally the best possible scenario and outcome,” Holbrook said. “Ultimately the crew of that airplane were lucky, because from what my guys told me, that plane was in the ice with the tail refrozen, and if that tail hadn’t refrozen, it would have sunk.”

The 60,000-acre (24,200-hectare) Tustumena Lake, the largest freshwater body on the Kenai Peninsula, is about 80 miles (130 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage, with nearby mountains and a glacier.

It has been described by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game as “notorious for its sudden, dangerous winds,” with conditions that can cause havoc for both boats and planes.

“The terrain helps turn the winds around, and occasionally they get a little squirrelly,” said Michael Kutz, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Anchorage.

Godes agreed that the area is always windy and the water can be whipped up into waves.

“Then just the way it’s placed right there at the heel of that, or at the toe of that glacier where you’ve got mountains on both sides, you know, just a few miles to the west, you’ve got Cook Inlet running back and forth with huge temperature and tidal swings every day,” he said. “It’s just a recipe for chaos and for turbulence.”

There was no indication yet why the plane crashed.

Mark Ward, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board’s Alaska division, said the pilot had not yet reported the accident, nor had the agency been able to contact him. Efforts were to be made again Wednesday to speak to him.

DENVER (AP) — A painting of Donald Trump hanging with other presidential portraits at the Colorado state Capitol will be taken down after Trump claimed that his was “purposefully distorted,” according to a letter obtained by The Associated Press.

House Democrats said in a statement that the oil painting would be taken down at the request of Republican leaders in the Legislature. Colorado Republicans raised more than $10,000 through a GoFundMe account to commission the oil painting, which was unveiled in 2019.

Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen, a Republican, said that he requested for Trump’s portrait to be taken down and replaced by one “that depicts his contemporary likeness.”

“If the GOP wants to spend time and money on which portrait of Trump hangs in the Capitol, then that’s up to them,” the Democrats said.

The portrait was installed alongside other paintings of U.S. presidents. Before the installation, a prankster placed a picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin near the spot intended for Trump.

Initially, people objected to artist Sarah Boardman’s depiction of Trump as “nonconfrontational” and “thoughtful” in the portrait, according to an interview with Colorado Times Recorder from the time.

But in a Sunday night post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he would prefer no picture at all over the one that hangs in the Colorado Capitol. The Republican lauded a nearby portrait of former President Barack Obama – also by Boardman – saying “he looks wonderful.”

“Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the state Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” Trump wrote.

The portraits are not the purview of the Colorado governor’s office but the Colorado Building Advisory Committee. The ones up to and including President Jimmy Carter were donated as a collection. The others were donated by political parties or, more recently, paid for by outside fundraising.

The Legislature’s executive committee, made up of both Democratic and Republican leadership, signed a letter directing the removal of Trump’s portrait. Lundeen, the Republican senator who requested it, noted that Grover Cleveland, whose presidential terms were separated like Trump’s, had a portrait from his second term.

Boardman did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. In interviews from the time with The Denver Post, Boardman said it was important that her depictions of both Obama and Trump looked apolitical.

“There will always be dissent, so pleasing one group will always inflame another. I consider a neutrally thoughtful, and nonconfrontational, portrait allows everyone to reach their own conclusions in their own time,” Boardman told the Colorado Times Recorder in 2019.

Trump’s Sunday night comments had prompted a steady stream of visitors to pose for photos with the painting before the announcement that it would be taken down.

Aaron Howe, visiting from Wyoming on Monday, stood in front of Trump’s portrait, looking down at photos of the president on his phone, then back up at the portrait.

“Honestly he looks a little chubby,” said Howe of the portrait, but “better than I could do.”

“I don’t know anything about the artist,” said Howe, who voted for Trump. “It could be taken one way or the other.”

Kaylee Williamson, an 18-year-old Trump supporter from Arkansas, got a photo with the portrait.

“I think it looks like him. I guess he’s smoother than all the other ones,” she said. “I think it’s fine.”