SPANISH FORT, Ala. — At the age of 26, Scott Christmas not only learned he was not invincible, but that sometimes the selfless gifts of total strangers can be the difference between life and death.

“I thought the world couldn’t stop me,” he said.

Christmas, a Mobile native who has lived in Fairhope for four years, has become an outspoken advocate for LifeSouth Blood Centers since a 1996 plane crash killed his pilot friend on contact and left him airlifted to the University of South Alabama with a 3 percent chance of survival.

Christmas said the plane stalled somewhere between 300 and 500 feet in the Weeks Bay area, plummeting into only about 4 feet of water at 100 miles per hour.

The crash left him with both a ruptured spleen and aorta and broke his back in the lumbar region among other injuries.

“They told me if we don’t operate on you right now, you’ll die,” Christmas recalled, noting he received 53 units of blood during the ordeal, or enough to replenish his own supply three times.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but it drained all the local blood banks of my (blood) type, and I was just one person on one random day,” he said.

As the largest blood bank in Alabama, LifeSouth is the sole provider of blood and blood products for Thomas Hospital in Fairhope, North Baldwin Infirmary in Bay Minette and six high-volume hospitals across Mobile County. The nonprofit blood bank serves hospitals in Alabama, Georgia and Florida.

Christmas said the organization has taken on a central role in his life over the past 15 years because he knows he never would have survived the ordeal without an adequate blood supply.

“We can reach out and touch lives. We all carry that gift within us, and there’s no question LifeSouth provides a critical service to our communities, but they depend on us to do their job,” he said.

As blood centers across the nation celebrate January as Blood Donor Awareness Month, local LifeSouth officials estimate the weekly need for blood at around 750 units, yet area donors provide less than 400 units per week.

Lacy Arendall Radcliff, LifeSouth’s district community development coordinator, said about 100 donors per day are needed to meet demand across the coastal Alabama region, and about one-quarter of that amount is needed in Baldwin County alone.

For more information or to arrange a blood drive, visit www.lifesouth.org or call 251-706-1470.