Van Plunge Kills 3 JPL Workers

Three workers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory were killed and two others critically injured Wednesday when their commuter van plunged off a twisting mountain road and tumbled more than 400 feet down a foggy ravine in the Angeles National Forest.

The van, carrying 10 administrators and engineers for the robotic space flight center on their morning commute to JPL headquarters in Pasadena, was traveling at a “safe speed” along Angeles Forest Highway shortly after dawn, authorities said. The van suddenly careened over a berm and tumbled into the ravine.

The cause of the accident remained under investigation.

A motorist who witnessed the accident alerted two California Highway Patrol officers working at a nearby movie shoot. Authorities soon scrambled down the slope toward the sound of screams and a honking horn.

After following a trail of broken brush and personal belongings, officers discovered the crumpled van at the bottom of the ravine, with victims moaning for help.

“It was a mess,” said CHP spokesman Matt Armenta. “There were a lot of bodies.... Everything was smashed up.”

The dead were identified as Dorothy M. Forks, 53, of Lancaster, a JPL human resources employee; Jane F. Galloway, 49, of Lancaster, a manager of JPL’s business operations; and Kerri Lynn Agey, 48, of Ontario, a JPL security contractor.

Of the seven injured, two remained in critical condition, one with a broken back and the other with a broken neck. Two others were listed in fair condition with fractures and cuts, said officials at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena. Three others were released after treatment. None of the survivors were identified.

U.S. Forest Service Fire Capt. Tony Martinez was told of the accident as he was getting his children ready for school. He, a fellow firefighter and the CHP officers were among the first to arrive at the scene and scramble down the steep slope to the wrecked van.

The first victim Martinez came across was a man sitting amid thick brush about three-quarters of the way up the ravine. The man, who was shaken but not seriously injured, said he had crawled up from the smashed van but could go no farther.

“Help them,” Martinez recalled the man saying, pointing down the ravine. Martinez could hear the van’s horn honking below, and continued down the steep slope, following the trail of broken brush and debris.

“We’re coming!” he recalled yelling. Arriving at the van, Martinez said he found a gruesome scene. The vehicle was upright, but the roof had collapsed on the passengers inside, some of whom he could hear yelling for help.

Sitting next to the van was a middle-aged man with a broken shoulder and foot, injured but conscious. There was a woman unconscious against the side of the van, an arm still tangled in a seat belt.

Peering inside, Martinez said he saw a sprawl of bodies. In the front was the male driver and a female passenger, both injured but conscious. Another passenger was lying on a bench seat. Two other men, both conscious but injured, were in the van.

Tire tracks along the shoulder of the road show the van left the pavement on a curve after a 100-yard stretch of straight road. With no guardrail along the shoulder, the van’s right wheels appeared to straddle the dirt berm for another 20 yards, flattening brush and dirt before hitting a rock and toppling several large yucca plants.

From there, a swath of crushed yucca and sagebrush marked the van’s path as it tumbled 400 feet down the steep ravine.

The mountain road, posted for a 55-mph speed limit despite its many sharp curves, is a popular commuter shortcut from the Antelope Valley and Palmdale to the La Canada Flintridge and Pasadena area, CHP and Forest Service officials said.

“This is a commute road. There’s a lot of heavy traffic,” said CHP Officer Vince Bell. “But it’s really a rural mountain highway. It was never meant to be a commuting highway.”

The accident occurred about 6:20 a.m., roughly a mile from the intersection of Angeles Forest Highway and Angeles Crest Highway, about 20 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles.

The van was one of a fleet of 30 vehicles used by JPL’s employees on their morning commute to work.

About 450 of the lab’s 5,500 employees ride to work in the vans.

Employees commuting from Lancaster have a choice of two routes: Angeles Forest/Angeles Crest Highway, or the Antelope Valley Freeway.

Fred Tomey, a supervisor for the lab’s Cassini space exploration project, said the van that crashed Wednesday used both routes, but that the mountain road was often used because it is shorter.

Conditions along the road early Wednesday morning were difficult but not treacherous, said Jon Samson, a CHP spokesman. The sun had risen about 20 minutes before the crash and, with a thick blanket of fog covering the mountains above the road, it was likely still dim. The pavement was damp from the fog, but it was not cold enough for ice to have formed, Samson said.

At a news conference Wednesday, a JPL spokesman said employees had been informed of the accident and that the news was being taken “very, very hard.”

“It’s a sad day for all of us,” said JPL spokesman Blaine Baggett. “It takes all kinds of people to explore the solar system. Some of them are engineers, some scientists. But these accomplishments are made possible by the contributions of all of the professionals at JPL. The loss of Dorothy, Jane and Kerri is deeply felt by us all.”

Five of the injured were taken by helicopter to Pasadena’s Huntington Memorial, where hospital spokeswoman Connie Matthews said all were expected to recover.

“They are very relieved. They are visibly shaken but they are staying very calm,” Matthews said.

She described the general mood of the victims as one of “disbelief that this could happen -- that some people were fatally injured and others escaped alive.”

Outside the emergency room, Tomey said he had been told very little about the accident or the victims.

He had a brief visit with one of the injured, who had suffered a broken ankle. “He’s doing fine,” Tomey said.

The man told his boss he had been sleeping when the crash occurred and offered little information on what had happened.

“When he woke up, he thought he was at the main gate [of the lab], but he was down in the gully,” Tomey said.

The only other thing the man remembered was sitting by the side of the road, waiting for the helicopter to take him to the hospital.

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Times staff writers Peter Y. Hong, Eric Malnic and Monte Morin contributed to this report.