Cause of Fire Traced in Nelson Air Crash
- Share via
DE KALB, Tex. — National Transportation Safety Board investigators are checking into the possibility that an antiquated gasoline-fed heater may have caused a fire in entertainer Rick Nelson’s plane before it crashed here New Year’s Eve.
But investigators stressed that they are far from concluding what caused the twin-engine DC-3 to crash, killing Nelson, 45; his 27-year-old fiancee, Helen Blair, and five members of his band. Only the pilot and co-pilot survived.
Safety board Chairman James Burnett said a fuel line leading to the plane’s rear heater was broken, but it is unclear whether the break occurred before or after impact.
More From the Los Angeles Times
Podcasts
It turns out you can burn down a neighborhood and not destroy a community. We’ve seen evidence of this all across L.A. and so we will head back to one neighborhood that’s a good example of that bond: West Poppyfields Drive in Altadena.
Today we discuss one of the pivotal events of the 1960s: the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Though the gunman was caught at the scene, confessed at trial, and even bragged about the shooting, his motives have largely been forgotten.
Modern LA earned its first smoggy nickname 450 years ago, as the “bay of smokes.” At the La Brea tar pits, we take a short walk through a long history with curator Regan Dunn, who explains how and why the first Angelenos would have set fires that filled the broad bowl of LA and foretold the curse of smog.
