Christie Brinkley on Surviving 1994 Helicopter Crash: ‘This World Is Full of Magic and Miracles’

With the release of her new memoir, the supermodel reflected on the accident. She believes she was saved by ’magic soil.’

Christie Brinkley attends the 35th Annual Footwear News Achievement Awards in New York City on Nov. 30, 2021. Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

With the release of her new memoir “Uptown Girl,” Christie Brinkley is reflecting on a terrifying helicopter crash that shifted her perspective on life and affirmed her belief in miracles.

In an interview with Fox News Digital published May 5, the former supermodel, 71, explained that her belief in magic and unexplained events in life has proved to be a guiding light for her.

“I think that this world is full of magic and miracles,” she said.

In 1994, Brinkley suffered minor injuries after she and five others embarked on a heli-skiing tour that ended in a crash in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado.

“The crash was sudden and traumatic, coming out of nowhere,” she recalled. “We had already taken two runs and were circling to land for a third, on the saddle of a faraway peak, when the helicopter just fell from the sky, plunging into a freefall from 300 feet overhead, with no autorotation.”

Brinkley, who was 40 at the time, explained how the helicopter plunged into the mountaintops below and what happened next.

“Everything else around me went airborne,” she wrote.

“I tried to grab onto something—a seat, a railing, anything—but my entire body felt pinned down, restrained by a force I couldn’t see or stop. Overwhelmed, I closed my eyes and waited to faint, still hoping I wouldn’t feel the blades when they cut into my neck. But then the rolling stopped, the wrecked tips of the rotor blades digging into the mountain as we started to slide.”

The group was trapped on the mountain for five hours enduring heavy winds and snowy conditions, before rescue crews arrived and transported them to Telluride Regional Medical Center.

Brinkley noted that before the flight, she had visited Chimayo, New Mexico, an area known as a sanctuary and a historical landmark, one of the “most important Catholic pilgrimage centers in the United States.”

Visitors flock there for its “magical healing soil” in hopes of finding a cure for an ailment or an end to pain.

The day of the crash, Brinkley was carrying dirt from that area and described having a bad feeling, so she sprinkled some of the soil on the helicopter.

“I said, ‘Oh magic dirt, do your stuff, take good care of all of us on this helicopter this day,’” she recalled.

“I do believe in miracles. Maybe it was a miracle of Chimayo. Maybe it was pure luck. During the crash, there were a lot of sections where it could have ended it. But we kept escaping each step. It was a pretty miraculous survival story.”

Now, Brinkley views life from a different lens and despite suffering from PTSD as well as receiving a hip replacement because of the crash, being here for her three children brings her  gratitude.