Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS. : AT THE SCENE : Traffic Reporter Bruce Wayne Dies in Plane Crash

Thousands of motorists along Southern California freeways drove to work with their headlights on in tribute. A radio listener called in and whispered, “There’s going to be an empty spot in my car now.”

KFI’s “Eye in the Sky,” veteran airborne traffic reporter Bruce Wayne had been killed in the fiery crash of his plane shortly after takeoff from Fullerton Airport. As radio officials at KFI and KOST became aware that Wayne had not been heard from--and that a plane was down at Fullerton--KFI began broadcasting news reports on the event.

One of the first on the scene was Lois Wayne, a former reporter and Wayne’s wife of 21 years, who for more than two hours calmly broadcast news reports about the accident on KFI.

“I am at the crash site of a (Cessna) Cardinal,” she said on her first report. “There is no paint or a number on the aircraft. The aircraft did have an explosion on impact.”

Later, when the broadcasting was over and most of the reporters had left the crash scene, she broke down in sobs. “We always lived in the knowledge that something like this could happen. But that’s part of the territory.”

After authorities had placed her husband’s charred remains in a body bag, Lois Wayne knelt beside it, touched the bag and said a quiet prayer.

Wayne, 52, was just two weeks short of achieving his dream--25 years as an airborne traffic reporter. For 18 of those years, he had flown over the skies of Southern California, alerting motorists to the perils ahead on their daily journeys to work.

On Wednesday morning, his single-engine plane lifted off from the runway at Fullerton as it had on so many other mornings, but witnesses said the blue-and-white Cessna seemed to develop engine trouble about 400 feet above the ground.

A witness said the plane sounded as if it was backfiring, then rolled into a tight left turn. Moments later, it plunged into an empty tractor-trailer rig parked behind a warehouse half a mile east of the airport, exploding in a ball of fire on impact.

By the end of the week, National Transportation Safety Board investigators had not determined what caused the crash. They said the investigation could take several months.

Funeral services will be conducted at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday in the Old North Church at Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills.