The Near-Miss: New Questions, New Fears : In Cerritos, the Unthinkable Thought: Could It Happen Again?

Never in a thousand years, Lesa Rusch figured, could it happen again in the skies over Cerritos.

Then came the 6 o’clock news this week, and word that it nearly did.

In stunned silence, Rusch listened to the report of a near collision between an Aeromexico jetliner and a small plane on Saturday--five months to the day after she and her fiance stood horrified in their front yard and watched the burning wreckage of a midair collision destroy much of their neighborhood.

“For weeks and weeks, I’ve been telling myself lightning doesn’t strike twice, and then this,” said Rusch, who moved to the 13400 block of Reva Circle less than a month before an Aeromexico DC-9 and a private plane collided on Aug. 31 over the tranquil neighborhood. “Are we ever going to be safe again?”

The question was repeated often Tuesday by Rusch’s neighbors on Reva Circle, Holmes Avenue and Ashworth Place. It was here, on the east side of Cerritos, where the lawns are neatly clipped and the houses made of stucco and trimmed in browns and beiges, that Aeromexico Flight 498 came down last summer, killing 82 people, including 15 on the ground.

Those whose lives and homes were spared, cannot escape the lingering reminders of that day. The sleepless nights. The disturbing hum of an approaching jet. The empty lots where friends’ homes once stood.

And now the unthinkable, the possibility that their little world could again be ground zero in the event of another midair accident.

“I’ve told my boy a hundred times that it will never happen again,” said Sue Nelson, whose 7-year-old son Robbie was playing outside when the DC-9 slammed into the ground a backyard away in the 13400 block of Ashworth Place. “Now he looks at me . . . and I can’t say it won’t happen again. This makes me so sad and so angry.”

Nelson is not alone in her outrage over the latest incident.

Denise Guzman, who lost five family members in the crash, said Saturday’s near collision will bolster attempts by her group, Citizens United for Flight Safety, to push for new regulations safeguarding the skies. Since the near collision, she said, the grass-roots group formed two weeks after the Cerritos air disaster has received dozens of calls from people wanting to join.

“People are really scared,” said Guzman, a Whittier hair stylist who devotes most of her days now to the cause of air safety. “We want the President to appoint a special task force to study this issue, and we won’t stop until we get it.”

Cerritos officials also are upset, but acknowledge that there is not much they can do. Following last summer’s crash, the City Council adopted a series of resolutions calling for more air traffic controllers, improved safety, radar equipment on small planes and stiff fines for private pilots who stray into restricted airspace.

“It’s terribly frustrating because we’re just one little entity,” Cerritos Mayor Don Knabe said.

The mayor was driving home on the freeway Monday night when he first heard of the near collision. “It was spooky. The same airline, the same flight number, nearly the same time of day,” he said. “It’s sad because this city has just gotten to the point where people had stopped talking about the crash.”

Not in Nelson’s part of town. Not a day goes by, she said, that something does not remind her or her neighbors of the crash.

Outsiders still cruise the area, often stopping to take pictures despite signs that warn: “Residents only. Identification required.” The sounds of heavy equipment and of nails being pounded can be heard as two of the nine homes destroyed are rebuilt. Work on 11 other homes that were damaged has all but been completed.

On Tuesday, Moon Choi was attaching a new rain gutter to one of those homes at the corner of Reva and Holmes. He and his family were away the day of the crash. He returned to find his roof scorched and his front windows shattered. But a fresh coat of paint has given the house a new look. Still, Choi is worried.

“Is it really safe here?” he wondered aloud. “I worry. I’m not comfortable anymore.”