10 Years and Many Nightmares Later . . . : Talk, Time Help Ease Vivid Memories of Flight 182 Crash

Forty seconds past 9 a.m., 10 years ago today, PSA flight 182 began a gradual turn southwest over Mission Valley on final approach to Lindbergh Field. Skies were clear, visibility 10 miles, temperature already 85 degrees, building to a record 101 degrees under a Santa Ana weather condition.

“Traffic 12 o’clock, 1 mile, Cessna,” airport tower controller Alan Saville radioed the 727 jet, packed with 135 weekday commuters on their way to San Diego from Sacramento and Los Angeles.

“OK. We had him a minute ago,” PSA pilot James McFeron acknowledged.

“Roger,” the tower replied.

“Think he’s passing off to our right,” PSA added.

Firefighter John Allen was in the midst of a daily jog at Morley Field with colleagues from Station 14 at 32nd Street and Lincoln Avenue in North Park. A loud noise, like a popping sound, reverberated from the sky about a mile to the east. Looking up, Allen saw a large plane, its right wing on fire, plummeting toward the horizon.

At 145 seconds after 9, the PSA jet and the single-engine Cessna had collided 2,700 feet above 38th Street and El Cajon Boulevard.

‘We’re Going Down’

Seven seconds later, PSA calmly radioed Lindbergh, “Tower, this is PSA. We’re going down.”

“Roger. We’ll call the equipment for you.”

“Roger,” replied PSA.

Fifteen seconds later, the PSA plane plowed into a quiet North Park neighborhood along Dwight Street at an estimated speed of 310 m.p.h., erupting in an awesome cloud of thick black smoke that spread its acrid fumes over much of the city for hours to follow.

“San Diego (dispatch), Engine 14,” Allen panted into the portable two-way radio he carried while running.

“Engine 14,” Dispatch replied.

“An airliner has crashed in the vicinity of Interstate 805 and University (Avenue) and we are responding from Morley Field,” said Allen, his voice trembling.

Two or three seconds passed.

“Engine 14, are you responding to a vehicle fire?” the dispatcher queried.

“Negative, San Diego, this is an airliner crash at approximately 805 and University. We are responding.”

A decade later, the images remain vivid for those connected with the events of Monday, Sept. 25, 1978. At the time it was the worst airline accident in U. S. history.

“An awful lot has happened since, and sometimes it seems like an awful long time ago,” said City Manager John Lockwood, then the deputy city manager who took charge of San Diego’s response to the crash.

“But certainly, if you go back and look at the major incidents in this city over the past 50 years, this would be the one. The entire community focused on it, it was the focus of conversation with everyone for days afterward.”

Aboard the PSA jet, 128 passengers and a crew of seven, no survivors.

Aboard the Cessna, two dead as it crashed onto Polk Street near its intersection with 32nd.

On the ground, along Dwight Street between Nile and Boundary streets, seven dead, nine injured. Twelve homes destroyed, 10 homes damaged in a neighborhood where longtime elderly residents mixed uneasily with highly transient blue-collar renters.

“There’s a story for every degree of the compass,” said Stanley Cichy, who, along with his wife, Madeline, escaped his burning house on Dwight Street that day.

Scene of Carnage

Among them: those of police officers and firefighters who responded to a scene of carnage beyond their worst imagination; those of neighborhood residents who narrowly escaped death and spent months trying to understand why they were spared; those of subdued employees of PSA, San Diego’s hometown airline until merged into USAir this year, who could never fully regain the spirit of an airline that had prided itself at once on its professionalism and an ability to give itself and its passengers a fun time.

“The way we tend to conceptualize time means that the 10th of anything will have more importance, more meaning, than the 9th, or the 11th,” said psychologist Alan Davidson, who volunteered to counsel persons needing help with their trauma after the crash, and who still sees some victims occasionally.

“The fact is that a decade is a big chunk of time,” Davidson said. “The natural concerns and anxieties that these people have about the accident, such as fear of flying, somehow become a little more painful at the decade mark.”

As public relations consultant Bill Hastings, then deputy public affairs chief for PSA, said last week:

“It’s not something you ever will totally put out of your mind.”

Katherine Hoffman, the only injured resident along Dwight Street still alive today, said the Sparkletts water man helped save her life. The Sparkletts water man believed that she helped save his life as well.

“I was in the kitchen that day, and a good thing, because, if I had been the bedroom, I would have never been rescued,” said Hoffman, now in her mid-70s, who moved to La Mirada in Los Angeles County this summer. “We were night people and normally I wouldn’t be up, but the water was delivered on Monday mornings about 9, so I tried to be ready on that day.”

The nose of the 727 smashed through the front door of the duplex, where Hoffman, her husband, her sister and her sister’s husband lived. “Officer (Fred) Edwards would never have gotten me and my sister out if we both had been in the back asleep,” she said. The two husbands were not at home when the accident happened.

The Sparkletts driver later told Hoffman that he had tarried in his truck a block away, updating his log book, because he thought she would be late getting up, as usual.

Hoffman still carries heavy scars along the back of her arms where the intense heat of the burning fuselage seared her skin. “I’m not real religious, but I always have believed in a God, and I just have a belief that he watches over me,” she said.

‘Awful Black Smoke’

“The crash doesn’t bother me so much today. Then, I was in shock for about six months, but now I think more of how I ended up with a do-nothing lawyer who only got me $13,500 because he didn’t sue, whereas another person across the street sued and got $35,000, and here I couldn’t cook or even give myself a bath for a time.”

A few houses around the corner on Nile, Gladys Bonatus used a garden hose to put out several small fires that the accident started in her back yard. “There was the most awful black smoke you ever saw in your life, and the noise, oh, My God, it was bad,” she said. “But after an instant of just standing there like I had been shot, I went out and put the hose on. Otherwise my house would have been burned down.”

Added the feisty, 89-year-old Bonatus, stabbing her finger on the kitchen table for emphasis: “Sure, things were kind of a mess for a while after the crash, but I still live here, because my thinking was that I was here first, 52 years, long before that airplane came down.

“I asked my priest soon after why me, who is in her 80s, was saved and all the other houses with children were crushed. He told me that I still have something to do on this earth. That made me feel better, that I was still needed.

“I don’t think about the plane much anymore, but I do think about individual people from time to time. I still remember the little boy who lived in the first house on the corner, the little 4-year-old (Robert Stout, killed along with his mother, Nancy) who used to come over to my house and look at my doorbell button because it has a light in it. He used to stand with his arms folded and ask why it had that light.”

Her voice cracks slightly. “The poor little guy, he was crushed.”

Stanley Cichy attributes the fact that he and his wife, Madeline, lived through the destruction along Dwight Street to his faith in God.

“It was miraculous,” Madeline said softly.

“We hold fast to the promises that the Lord gives us,” Stanley said. “That is how we want to think about it, despite the destruction and depression that occurred. Being Christians, we feel that the Lord has had His hand over us. That is the true value in believing.”

In the same vein, Stanley credits his faith for helping persuade him to rebuild his house, rather than move. It took him almost six months after the accident to be able to stand at the crash site, but his belief in the Bible persuaded him that he could again live in the neighborhood without fear.

“Chapter 9 of the book of Luke says: ‘And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.’ ”

Today, Stanley tends what he considers a “living memorial” to the victims: a mock orange (Philadelphus) tree in his front yard that was severely scarred by the fire but nevertheless survived to sprout many branches and leaves.

Taking Comfort

“I’m glad I disabused myself of any notion of cutting it down in the period after the crash,” Stanley said.

Stanley also takes comfort in the fact that personal effects of his family and others that were destroyed along the block were used as fill in Balboa Park expansion rather than dumped in a city landfill.

“John Lockwood personally saw to that, realizing all the memories that these things had for me and others,” Stanley said, his voice choking. “He didn’t have to do that, but he did, and I value his thoughtfulness even today.”

George Pecoraro and his parents moved away from their house, three structures away from where the plane’s tail cartwheeled, about three years ago. Then a San Diego City College student, now a certified public accountant, he said he recalls the event primarily when he hears of other plane crashes.

“I do get white knuckles when I fly but, other than that, the bad dreams went away about three months afterward,” Pecoraro said. “Now I just thank God no one in my family was hurt, and I continue to pray for the relatives of those who did die and hope the anxiety continues to lessen as times goes on.”

Three months ago, Gretchen Tarango moved into the duplex that Hoffman built on the site of her destroyed home.

“I think it’s kind of interesting, what happened here,” Tarango said. “It gives the place a little history, sort of like a landmark. I feel safe here, I can’t imagine it ever happening again in the same place, especially since they have changed the flight path.

“And, if there are any spirits from Flight 182 around, they are around their own homes, not around here.”

The effects of the disaster linger in many ways as well with the police and firefighters, with the journalists, with the priests from nearby St. Augustine High School, all of whom swarmed to the scene in the minutes after the crash.

“To be honest with you, I have tried to put it out of my mind,” Fred Edwards, the officer who rescued Hoffman, said. He was a block away checking reports of a non-criminal death when he heard the PSA jet roar into the neighborhood.

“It was quite a shock and still plays quite heavily on me when I think about it, which is when there is a crash somewhere else and then, suddenly, I see everything again very clearly,” he said.

Now a special detective, Edwards said he has gone back to the scene several times in recent years to see how the rebuilding was done. “It hasn’t affected my ability and I’ve been able to come to terms with what happened,” he said.

For Detective Alan Rubin, the unpleasant memories have lingered longer. Rubin, who was patrolling on Point Loma when he heared the first call for help go out, spent 18 hours at the scene of the crash in the oppressive heat.

‘I Don’t Fly’

“I still think about it quite a bit. I don’t go to airports, and I don’t fly, and I used to be a pilot,” he said. “I haven’t been back to the scene. Another irony is the date is also my wife’s birthday, and that just brings back the memories more; it’s not like you can forget the day.

“It seems like yesterday. I can show you the exact spot where I was when I heard the call go out, it’s real bizarre. . . . I get quiet and moody.”

Despite those memories, Rubin said he would probably go to the scene of another crash if assigned.

“I know it probably would be bad, but I think I would know how to handle it better,” Rubin said.

Duke Nyhus, a retired deputy police chief, oversaw the command post at the scene.

“My first memory is both that of the heat and the hysteria of people being brought back from the site, and I remember thinking, ‘This is going to be a very long day.’

“Things are still pretty vivid. I can still see a little dog walking across the rubble, smoke still coming up, and realizing it was looking for someone, and that’s really a tear-jerker,” Nyhus said, his voice breaking a bit. “And then seeing the uniform tie from one of the flight crew waving on a guy wire, geez . . . .

“I do get on a plane, but you can’t fly into San Diego without being aware of the site and I look down almost every time and it never really leaves me.”

Sgt. Charles Mattingly coordinated emergency responses during the disaster and later reviewed police policies.

“As police, we are trained to help and take care of people, but, in a case like this, you feel devastated because there is no one to help and there is a total feeling of helplessness,” Mattingly said.

Firefighters also experienced the shock of seeing parts of so many human bodies strewn about the neighborhood, but today they say their command structure allowed them to deal with it more effectively than many police officers could.

“We live and work as a team,” said John Allen, now a captain in the training division.

Jim Ober, another firefighter among the first at the site, added: “Talking it out at the station in our own fraternal group, that helped us, since we go to everything as a four-man unit, while police are trained to operate on their own, and you can’t talk things out by yourself in patrol cars.

‘We Talked a Lot’

“We talked a lot at the (fire) station after the accident, and sure there was some black, or gallows humor, but it was a real release.”

Allen said that, early after the disaster, the city offered psychological counseling for police and firefighters through the offices of Alan Davidson, president of the San Diego County Psychological Society in 1978. The society agreed to provide the services free.

“But, just prior to this, the Police Department had had a scandal where one of their psychologists had compiled information that had leaked out, and that was fresh in our minds,” Allen said. “So I know a number of people who did not take advantage of the offer because of that reason, although I think the problem has been remedied today.”

Mattingly said the policy review by police led to improvements in the psychological support program, what is now called “critical incident stress management,” which Rubin said he found “weak” at the time.

“We ultimately lost 11 officers (through retirement) who worked the crash and it became obvious that there was a need for stronger support by the department,” Mattingly said.

Photographer Hans Wendt found himself in the limelight after the crash, a position from which--10 years later--he still cringes.

Wendt, the official photographer for the County of San Diego, snapped the two famous color pictures of the stricken jet as it plunged to the ground. The only known pictures of the accident in the air, they have been reprinted around the world, and Wendt still receives occasional requests for reprints through his New York agent.

Wendt had just completed a series of close-up photos of vapor recovery handles on gasoline pumps at service stations, so common today but controversial and experimental a decade ago when first required by county air pollution control officials.

At the end of a press conference on the handles at the Go-Lo station, now a Thrifty’s gas station, at University and Boundary next to Interstate 805, Wendt heard the jet as it began its fall.

“Taking the pictures was pure instinct,” Wendt said. “Only after I got the two shots did I think about the fact the plane couldn’t pull out of that dive, and what were the people inside the plane thinking? I felt very weird and got rubber legs.”

Two Good Pictures

Wendt took his film to Photic, a professional lab, which called him back at his county office a couple of hours later and said there were two good pictures. Wendt then made arrangements with the San Diego Union and United Press International for them to use the pictures exclusively the next day.

“There’s always the feeling of elation professionally at having done a good job,” Wendt said. “The accident had already happened, and I couldn’t do anything about that. It’s more positive to get a good picture than a bad picture.”

One photo was nominated for journalism’s Pulitzer Prize but did not win. “I didn’t take full advantage of the publicity that I could have quit my county job and free-lanced or gotten a better-paying job, but I have no regrets,” Wendt said.

“I still feel funny taking someone to the airport or seeing a plane in the same position as the PSA plane in the air. But I don’t dwell on it, I just feel that small airplanes should stay away from big airplanes.”

Father Jim Clifford was standing in the courtyard of St. Augustine High School during a morning recess, marveling on how bright and beautiful the day was turning out to be.

“I noticed these two planes coming closer together and remarked that they were becoming too close,” Clifford recalled from his parish in Ojai, where he moved several years ago.

“Then there was a puff of smoke and the next thing I knew the PSA plane banked sharply and started to fall, and at first I feared it was going to crash right into our school. That was the only time I really felt scared, and I screamed, ‘Let’s get out of here, run!’ But, a moment later, the plane took a nose dive straight down.”

Clifford said his strong religious beliefs helped him cope with the tragedy, from the moment he ran to the site to give a general prayer of absolution at the scene, to the present time.

“It’s my belief in the afterlife, where all justice and goodness must come together, that allows me to experience the tragedy and believe that, even in its midst, something positive can come from it,” Clifford said.

“As it fell, I wanted to just see the hand of God come out and lift the craft and care for it. I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but it went through my mind, entrusting the entire scene to God.”

The National Transportation Safety Board, in its investigation of the accident, placed blame on crew error in the PSA jet for failing to maintain adequate clearance from other planes, as well as failing to tell controllers that they did not have confirmed sightings of other planes.

The NTSB subsequently cited deficiencies as well with visual separation procedures then used by the Federal Aviation Administration in controlling San Diego airspace. The pilot of the PSA jet had waved off an instrument landing because of the clear weather, electing, instead, to land visually, when he ran into the Cessna, whose pilot was on a training flight to practice flying by instrumentation.

PSA never accepted the main conclusion, arguing along with the Air Line Pilots Assn. that the 727 pilot confused the Cessna with at least one other small plane that was in the area at the time the Lindbergh Field tower sent its advisory.

‘So Antiquated’

“We felt that way because the air traffic system was so antiquated in relying on see-and-avoid as to raise serious questions whether the plane that collided with the jet was the one that had been called out by the controller,” Bill Hastings, the former deputy public relations manager of PSA, said.

Hastings was on a plane to Sacramento on the morning of the crash to conduct a fear-of-flying class.

“The incident and its aftermath had a dramatic effect on PSA emotionally, as a company and on its employees. We had taken tremendous pride to be as safe as possible but also to have a good time while working,” Hastings added, referring to funny comments that flight attendants would make on the plane as well as to the company’s offbeat advertising, including the smile painted on the nose of its planes.

“The lighter side of the airline was removed for a number of years because we took the crash so hard.” Eighteen non-working crew members were aboard the plane on their way to assignments that day at PSA headquarters in San Diego. “In so many ways, it was a terrible personal loss for all of us,” Hastings said.

Alan Saville, the Lindbergh controller who was the last person to have contact with the PSA plane, has said little publicly in the years since the crash.

A month after the crash, he told The Times that at first he blamed himself but later felt no guilt.

“If I say I feel guilt and should take the blame, I would have to say I would have done it differently. I can’t say I did it wrong,” Saville said at the time.

‘I Did Deal With It’

Last week, Saville, now a pilot for a regional air carrier, reluctantly talked a bit more about the incident, which he said “seems like an awfully long time ago.”

Saville, who was fired as a controller in 1981 along with thousands of others by President Reagan in a labor dispute with the government, conceded that “I still think about the accident as does everybody who was involved, more than the average person does.

“All I can say is that, in terms of dealing with it, I did deal with it, but there is no way that I could or would want to tell you what all my personal thoughts were.” He said that colleagues at the time helped him cope with the aftermath.

“Controllers all do think about death,” he said, “and it adds to the pressures, but you can’t think about it every minute or you couldn’t do your work.

“Obviously the PSA incident was and is not something I want to think about every day.”

Saville said the air-traffic system is “much, much safer today” under rules put into effect after the accident that require all planes in the Lindbergh Field area to fly under radar supervision by controllers.

“An accident like (that one) is much less likely today,” Saville said.