Wolfy
Well-Known Member
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/articl...Title=Plane-crash-at-Sonoma-airport-injures-2
I was at the airport yesterday during a plane crash. The article gets most of the details right. I'll tell it from my perspective.
I was in a hangar with 3 other guys after our Saturday bbq. We were planning out a formation photo shoot for my airplane. We all heard the airplane take off with its buzzing Rotax. One of the guys says “I don’t like hearing airplanes over that part of the airport”. About 30 seconds later a kid comes sprinting in and says “That plane that just took off spun in to the dirt!” For some reason, I misunderstood him and thought the plane was a tailwheel and ground looped. One of the guys just starts running, and I run with him. I’m putting together what happened. He says he’s going to go up and try to find the guy. Apparently, someone crashed once before and the ambulance couldn’t find him for almost an hour in the vineyards. I swing his prop and he goes.
I start sprinting towards the takeoff end of 26. I don’t know that much, but I’ve been to EMT-B school and was sure I could get there before the medics. I follow the runway line and find them just maybe 1000 feet from the end of the centerline. There are already some cars and people gathering around. It had settled upright just feet from a building on top of a cyclone fence. That building had a bunch of people in it, and they’re all standing around.
I walk up the last bit to the crash and introduce myself. The front end of the airplane is just gone. Their feet are dangling out. I check in with both of them, and they’re both breathing and conscious. They have large gashes on their heads. They’re completely disoriented and trying to figure what happened. The people next to them keep talking to them, which makes them lift up their heads. I do my best to get everyone to stop talking to them, and have them stop moving. They have broken bones and with what they went through, I’m sure they have some spinal damage. Later someone suggests they didn’t have any broken bones or broken back because they were able to move. Those are the misconceptions that scare the hell out of me.
A fire truck arrives and as the guys walk up, I walk away. They must have been there in less than 5 minutes. Within another 5 minutes, that small road has a fire truck, two ambulances and eight cop cars. I wait there a while, and then get a ride back to the airport. It’s a mad house. 2 helicopters, dozens of people, more cop cars. My airplane is near one of the helicopters, and a friend of mine tied it down and is holding on to it. He said it was bouncing around when the helicopters came. Both of the helicopters leave one after another. The guys were still alive last I heard.
The best description I heard of what happened was from one of the machine operators working on the end of the runway. He said it took off then the engine sounded different. The tail kept getting lower and the plane didn’t get any higher, then it started falling and rolled over. Sounds like they had engine trouble and tried to pull out of it, but that’s just my guess.
I was at the airport yesterday during a plane crash. The article gets most of the details right. I'll tell it from my perspective.
I was in a hangar with 3 other guys after our Saturday bbq. We were planning out a formation photo shoot for my airplane. We all heard the airplane take off with its buzzing Rotax. One of the guys says “I don’t like hearing airplanes over that part of the airport”. About 30 seconds later a kid comes sprinting in and says “That plane that just took off spun in to the dirt!” For some reason, I misunderstood him and thought the plane was a tailwheel and ground looped. One of the guys just starts running, and I run with him. I’m putting together what happened. He says he’s going to go up and try to find the guy. Apparently, someone crashed once before and the ambulance couldn’t find him for almost an hour in the vineyards. I swing his prop and he goes.
I start sprinting towards the takeoff end of 26. I don’t know that much, but I’ve been to EMT-B school and was sure I could get there before the medics. I follow the runway line and find them just maybe 1000 feet from the end of the centerline. There are already some cars and people gathering around. It had settled upright just feet from a building on top of a cyclone fence. That building had a bunch of people in it, and they’re all standing around.
I walk up the last bit to the crash and introduce myself. The front end of the airplane is just gone. Their feet are dangling out. I check in with both of them, and they’re both breathing and conscious. They have large gashes on their heads. They’re completely disoriented and trying to figure what happened. The people next to them keep talking to them, which makes them lift up their heads. I do my best to get everyone to stop talking to them, and have them stop moving. They have broken bones and with what they went through, I’m sure they have some spinal damage. Later someone suggests they didn’t have any broken bones or broken back because they were able to move. Those are the misconceptions that scare the hell out of me.
A fire truck arrives and as the guys walk up, I walk away. They must have been there in less than 5 minutes. Within another 5 minutes, that small road has a fire truck, two ambulances and eight cop cars. I wait there a while, and then get a ride back to the airport. It’s a mad house. 2 helicopters, dozens of people, more cop cars. My airplane is near one of the helicopters, and a friend of mine tied it down and is holding on to it. He said it was bouncing around when the helicopters came. Both of the helicopters leave one after another. The guys were still alive last I heard.
The best description I heard of what happened was from one of the machine operators working on the end of the runway. He said it took off then the engine sounded different. The tail kept getting lower and the plane didn’t get any higher, then it started falling and rolled over. Sounds like they had engine trouble and tried to pull out of it, but that’s just my guess.
