Plane Crashes Into Homes in Buena Park; 2 Injured

A light plane that lost altitude on takeoff from Fullerton Municipal Airport hit two houses and burst into flames Wednesday, burning a student pilot and her instructor.

The aircraft, which bounced off one house, skidded across busy Artesia Boulevard and crashed into another home, missed a gas main by three feet, witnesses and officials said.

Less than three hours after the fiery, 4:33 p.m. crash, a Newport Beach man escaped serious injury after his twin-engine plane also lost power and nose-dived into a muddy bank of the Santa Ana River in Anaheim. The pilot escaped serious injury.

The plane’s occupants in the Buena Park crash were not as lucky.

“It just dropped like a toy . . . just fell out of the sky,” said Eric Carruthers, 19. Carruthers was at home four doors from where the Cessna 152 slid into the rear bedroom of a house at Darlington Street and Artesia Avenue in Buena Park.

“The lady (student pilot) was screaming real loud,” Carruthers said. “The back of her neckwas all fire. It was real bad. When I first looked at it, flames were just starting to shoot out of the window of the cockpit.”

“I saw someone opening the door (of the plane). As soon as he put his hands in there, it (the plane) lit. Her hair was on fire and so was her shirt. By the time he got her out, it started on fire so fast it melted, it just folded.”

Authorities and witnesses said flight instructor Brad Pierce, 28, pulled student pilot Morya Pim, 29, from the plane as flames shot above the roof of the house.

The cause of the crash was unknown Wednesday, but the National Transportation Safety Board will conduct an investigation, a spokesman said.

Shaken neighbors were grateful that the crash, less than a mile west of the airport, was not worse. But Buena Park Mayor Donna L. Chessen was outraged, declaring: “We can’t continue to be this lucky all the time.”

The residential neighborhood around Fullerton Municipal Airport “is being used as a landing field,” Chessen said, noting that the crash was the third in recent months.

Residents in the area of the crash site said it appeared that the plane’s engine was sputtering after it took off from the Fullerton airport. The plane appeared to veer as if returning to the airport, then lost altitude and crashed, according to Buena Park Police Officer Gary Jackson, who quoted witness accounts.

“Apparently they tried to set (the plane) down on the street,” he said.

But as the Cessna descended, it clipped the corner of a stucco house on the north side of Artesia Boulevard, then ripped down a 20-foot cedar tree and skidded across the street, landing upside down against the home of Rex Dewell, 21. The plane smashed into the corner of his house, just missing the gas main, which could have exploded if struck, Dewell said.

“I was just sitting in the living room starting to watch TV,” Dewell said. “I thought there were two cars that hit.

“I heard someone yell: ‘My God!’ and then, ‘They’re dead!’ ”

Dewell said he ran outside, “grabbed the hose and tried to spray the house and the plane,” while its pilot and flight instructor were still inside.

“I could hear them screaming when I walked out of the house. It gave me chills up my spine.”

Pim, who is visiting from Great Britain, suffered third-degree burns over 25% of her body and was taken by emergency medical helicopter to UCI Medical Center’s burn ward, where she was listed in critical condition.

Pierce, a Garden Grove resident who was burned over 15% of his body, was transported by ambulance to West Anaheim Humana Hospital, where he was treated and released, a spokesman said.

“What you see is the end result of a miracle,” said FAA official John Fraser, as he surveyed the wreckage.

“God saved us,” agreed Rosio Reyes, 31, who is five months pregnant and who scurried with her 1-year-old son from inside a house next door where the plane first struck. “I heard it hit and it was like an earthquake,” Reyes said.

Pim, a chiropractor vacationing in the United States since Aug. 25, is not a licensed pilot, according to Mark Fisher, a friend who waited for word on her condition at the medical center in Orange.

“This is just so horrible,” Fisher said. “She’s just taking (flight lessons) as a hobby.”

Fisher said he has notified Pim’s family in England.

The Cessna is leased by Liberty Aviation Services, 230 N. Dale Place, Fullerton, a maintenance facility and flight school, according to an employee who declined to give her full name. She said, however, that Pierce, 28, is a certified flight instructor who joined the firm about two or three years ago. Neither the plane nor Pierce have had any previous problems, she said.

Chris Meyer, acting director of the Fullerton airport, said that Pim has been a student pilot only in recent weeks.

No one on the ground was injured in the spectacular crash, Buena Park Police spokeswoman Betty Haney said.

“We were very fortunate because that’s a very busy street--Artesia,” she added.

Ironically, the owner of the house where the plane came to rest was scheduled to ask the Buena Park Planning Commission Wednesday night for permission to demolish the structure and replace it with a new home.

Terry Rogers, Dewell’s mother-in-law, said she was frightened for Dewell and her daughter, Alicia. But Dewell was undeterred.

“We’re going to stay; just dodge the planes again.” he said. “(But) to me, it’s a miracle they (the pilot and flight instructor) got out.”

Times Staff Writers Lily Eng, Jeffrey A. Perlman, Jim Carlton, Catherine Gewertz and Eric Lichtblau contributed to this report.

ANAHEIM CRASH

A Newport Beach pilot escapes serious injury in an Anaheim crash. Story in Part II, Page 3.

TROUBLED PAST

Fullerton Municipal Airport has long attracted complaints on safety. Story, Part II, Page 1.