Plane Levels Home in Sepulveda; Pilot Killed

Ken Ashton was eating French fries and watching a “Star Trek” rerun on television Wednesday night when a light plane crashed into his Sepulveda home and exploded, killing the pilot and destroying the house. Ashton was barely scratched.

“I’m lucky to be alive,” Ashton marveled a short time later after a few small head cuts were treated at Granada Hills Community Hospital.

Spokesmen for the Los Angeles City Fire Deparment and Federal Aviation Administration said the pilot of the twin-engine plane had radioed the control tower at Van Nuys Airport a few minutes earlier, just before 7 p.m., that he was experiencing engine trouble. The pilot said he was not sure he could keep the plane in the air long enough to reach the runway about 1 1/2 miles from the crash site, officials said.

‘Happened Real Fast’

Ashton, 38, said the crash “happened real fast.”

“I was sitting on a couch in the corner (of the living room) when I heard an engine roar, real loud,” Ashton said. “Then, bang, the plane hit the other corner. There was dust everywhere, the ceiling fell in and there was an explosion. Everything turned orange.

“The French windows had been blown out, and I just jumped out through them and the house went up in flames. It was instantaneous.”

By the time firefighters extinguished the flames, all that remained of the house at 9545 Ruffner Ave. were a few smoking outer walls and the charred hulks of a Fiat sedan and a Chevrolet pickup that had been parked in the garage and the driveway. Bits of fuselage were imbedded in the remains of the living-room wall.

One body, presumed to be that of the pilot, was found in the ashes of the plane, according to Fire Department Battalion Chief Ted O’Miela.

The body was not immediately identified.

There was a possibility that the remains of any passengers in the plane could be buried in the rubble and ashes of the house, O’Miela said, incinerated by the intense heat. But no evidence of other bodies was found immediately.

‘Didn’t Even Get My Wallet’

Ashton, a nuclear medicine technician at Encino Hospital, said he lost everything in the fire but the clothes he was wearing.

“I didn’t even get my wallet,” he said.

Fire Department officials estimated the loss at $125,000, but Ashton said the figure “must be far higher than that. It’s going to take me some time just to add it up.”

FAA spokesman Dick Hallen said the plane, identified as a twin-engine Piper Aerostar, was based at Van Nuys. It had taken off about noon from John Wayne Airport in Orange County, but it was not known where the plane was returning from when it crashed, he said.

Dick Butala, 49, who lives four houses away from the crash site, said he was walking his two dogs when “I heard the sputtering of an engine,” looked up and saw the plane just about to strike Ashton’s house.

“The engine stopped, and then the plane went straight into the house. It just dropped on top of the house.

“There was a big burst of flames,” Butala said, and the street shook from the explosion. “It sounded like someone had dropped a bomb.”

Flames ‘150 Feet High’

“The flames were at least 150 feet high,” said Janet Greenhalgh, 17, who lives next door to Ashton.

“I’ve often worried about planes crashing here,” Butala said. “We’re right in the flight path.”

“I’ve just been waiting for this to happen,” said another neighbor, Fred Wilkin, 63, complaining about the airport traffic.

“We’ve all been concerned about this for years,” said another neighbor, David Guzman.

“The airport was there a long time before I bought the house,” Wilkin said. “You’ve got to live with it. You’ve got to put up with the noise and the possibility of accidents.”

Neighboring House Saved

Fire Department spokesman Pat Patterson called it miraculous that firefighters were able to save the Greenhalgh house next door. Firefighters put up a “wall of water” between the two buildings to prevent the intense heat of the burning plane from igniting the neighboring house, he said.

Ashton said he planned to spend the night with friends in Reseda.

Asked whether he would live in the same place if he can rebuild the house, he replied: “I don’t know. I really have to think about that one.”

Also contributing to this story were Times Staff Writers Greg Braxton and Nieson Himmel.