Plane Crash-Lands Between 2 Pacoima Houses; No One Hurt

A small airplane lost power near Whiteman Airport in Pacoima Thursday morning and crash-landed on a narrow driveway between two houses.

No one was injured, but one of the houses was slightly damaged.

“It was just blind luck that I didn’t hit anything,” said pilot Gerald D. Anderton, 36, of Sandy, Utah, who walked away from the crash with a scratch on his left hand. “Somebody upstairs was watching me.”

Six children and two women were inside the house in the 12600 block of Wingo Street that was damaged by the plane.

“I thought it was an earthquake. The house shook and there was such a loud boom,” Exaltacion Bartado, 22, said. “But then the earth didn’t move. It was quiet.”

“It was so frightening, my legs cannot stop shaking,” said Maximilla Mundo, 60, Bartado’s mother. “I thank God that nothing happened.”

Anderton said he was headed south approaching Burbank Airport shortly before 8 a.m. when the single engine of his Beechcraft Bonanza failed. He said he radioed Burbank air traffic controllers, who told him he could attempt to land at nearby Whiteman Airport.

On its way down, the plane clipped a garage roof and a tree and spun around, Anderton said. It crashed on a driveway, nicking the Wingo Street house, about a quarter-mile short of the airport runway.