DENVER -- In a split second, a once bustling airport came to a stand-still. The worst had happened. A plane crash that fire fighters train for was a reality.

“You see the whole picture and you say oh this is real and your whole scope and vision comes in because you’ve got a job to do,” said Randall Kemp, one of the first fire fighters to arrive at the crash site.

Kemp said it was odd driving to the downed plane because the area was pitch black.

“We could see almost nothing,” said Kemp. “We were almost on top of it before we could see anything.”

While Kemp and his crew were spraying a foam substance on the flames another team entered the plane to look for survivors.

“The first thing was like uh, what am I going to see,” said Jason Cole, the first fire fighter to get onto the plane. “I was expecting the worse, I didn’t want to see it. As I am going through each row, the visibility was practically zero so you are kind of feeling around, you have agent all over your face, and you are trying to wipe it from your mask.”

“I took a little pause before went on plane and braced myself for what I was going to see and I was overjoyed when walked in and there was nobody on the plane,” said Mike Benton of the Denver Fire Department. “It was like an abandoned plane.”

Fire fighters said the flight attendants saved the passengers by evacuating them immediately. Once the passengers got off the plane they walked single filed out of the ravine where the plane stopped to the fire station which happened to be nearby.

“We had people that were totally dazed with a deer in headlights look on them,” said Captain Tom Glivar. “We had people that were very emotional, crying.”

But the passengers weren’t the only ones emotional. Fire fighters said this crash is a Christmas miracle because most plane crashes are recoveries instead of rescues.

“The plane comes apart and usually explodes on impact,” said Fire Chief Bill Davis. “Quite frankly at this type of speed and distance this plane traveled it is a miracle that it didn’t come apart and get engulfed in flames.”