Plane Hits Truck on Freeway, Killing 2, Setting 740-Acre Fire

A light plane fell from the sky over Santa Ana Canyon, smashed into the front of a tractor-trailer rig and burst into flames Tuesday afternoon, killing the aircraft’s two occupants and setting off a fire that consumed more than 740 acres of brush.

The airplane was towing an advertising banner, which tangled in high-tension power lines crossing the canyon over the Riverside Freeway. The pilot lost control of his craft and plunged toward the eastbound traffic lanes.

Pat Napoli, 47, of Lake Elsinore, was hauling a load of furniture from Carson to Ohio in a brand-new truck, he said, when he saw the plane coming toward him. “I owned it (the truck) one day. This was my first trip . . . .

Evasive Moves Fail

“I swerved to the left, then right to avoid him,” Napoli said. The evasive moves proved futile, however, as plane and truck collided in the freeway’s right lane, Napoli told a reporter a few minutes after escaping the fireball that engulfed his truck.

The plane exploded on impact, blowing the roof off Napoli’s tractor and leaving the aircraft recognizable only by its smoldering engine and several ribs from the fuselage. The severely burned bodies of its two occupants had not been identified as of late Tuesday.

“He hit me and it caught fire, and we jumped out,” Napoli said. He and his wife, Joyce, 43, escaped injury, but their 19-year-old son, Michael, injured his leg as they fled the cab of the 18-wheeler.

Other motorists--some of whom said they felt pieces of the plane or its banner hit their cars--helped drag Michael away from the burning cab and fuselage. Witnesses said the family made it out of their truck less than three seconds before it was engulfed in flames.

The fire, meanwhile, spread quickly to dry brush covering the canyon’s steep hills south of the freeway, burning 15 acres within just 10 minutes. The flames, whipped by strong, shifting winds, engulfed the Mindeman livestock ranch and five structures there, which an Orange County Fire Department spokesman termed “a total loss.”

Fire Engine Destroyed

The blaze also destroyed a fire engine from the Naval Weapons Center in Norco when the engine was overrun by the blaze, said Joe Kerr of the Orange County Fire Department. Three firefighters suffered minor injuries.

The blaze was still out of control late Tuesday.

Fire officials warned residents of about 10 homes in neighboring Fresno Canyon that they might have to be evacuated, said Ted Pfeiffer, battalion chief for the Riverside County Fire Department and California Department of Forestry.

The accident occurred about midway between Anaheim Hills and Corona, near the Green River Golf Course.

Michael Napoli was taken to Corona Community Hospital, where he was treated for scrapes and shock, then released, a hospital spokeswoman said.

A Highway Patrol officer and several passers-by pulled the remains of the plane’s advertising banner down from the power lines as firefighters, about 50 yards away, doused the burning wreckage.

“We have unconfirmed reports that (the plane) was out of Chino,” a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said, “but we’re not sure.” The single-engine aircraft, he said, was a Maule Model 6.

A controller in the Chino Airport tower said Banner Airlines commonly uses a Maule Model 6 based there to tow banners.

A man answering the telephone Tuesday at Banner Airlines’ Chino office said the company had “no comment at this time.” He refused to confirm or deny that the plane belonged to Banner Airlines.

Traffic Disrupted

Tuesday’s crash and resulting fire slowed traffic on the westbound Riverside Freeway and brought eastbound lanes to a standstill. While firefighters doused the burning wreckage, only one lane of cars trickled past the scene.

As rush-hour traffic piled up all the way back to the Costa Mesa Freeway, the Riverside Freeway’s shoulders were littered with several dozen stalled cars, victims of 105-degree temperatures that also hampered firefighters’ efforts to halt the blaze.

The California Highway Patrol later closed the freeway in both directions, from Imperial Highway to the Corona Freeway, for close to two hours, a dispatcher said. All westbound lanes were reopened by about 6:45 p.m., she said, and traffic was moving slowly on two of the four eastbound lanes.

Another brush fire--caused by illegal fireworks--charred some of the same land just a year ago. The July 8, 1984, blaze blackened 580 acres around Coal Canyon.