2 Injured in Plane Crash : Pilot and Passenger Burned, Listed in Critical Condition

A pilot and his passenger were critically injured Tuesday morning when their private airplane crashed and caught fire shortly after takeoff from Fullerton Municipal Airport.

Eyewitnesses said the single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza BE-36 appeared to be losing power shortly before crashing beside the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad tracks about 300 feet east of Gilbert Street.

No one on the ground was injured in the crash, which occurred about 8:45 a.m. in an industrial area about a mile east of the airport, officials said.

“I heard the plane sputter, then all of a sudden it was at a 45-degree angle,” said Manny Sanchez, who was the first person to reach the crash site. “I saw it clip a light pole, make a big turn in the air, then hit the ground and burst into flames.”

Sanchez, who was stopped at a traffic light on Gilbert Street, quickly drove to the scene in the 1900 block of Raymer Avenue. As he got out of his truck, he saw one of the victims running out of the plane in flames.

“I grabbed him and I ripped off some of his burning clothes,” Sanchez said. “Then I ran toward the other guy and started ripping his burning clothes off, too.”

The injured men, pilot Tony Gale Dunivant, 40, and passenger Juan Sanchez, 30, were the only occupants in the four-seat plane, which had just embarked on what was to be a nonstop flight to Laredo, Tex., airport officials said.

Dunivant, a resident of Laredo, was in critical condition Friday at UCI Medical Center in Orange. He suffered second and third-degree burns over 80% of his body, hospital spokeswoman Fran Tardiff said.

Sanchez, a resident of El Paso, Tex., suffered second-degree burns over half of his body and third-degree burns on his hands. He was in the same hospital in critical condition, Tardiff said.

The plane was registered in Laredo and landed in Fullerton on Saturday. It remained parked at the airport until Tuesday morning, when it took off at 8:44 a.m., said Airport Director Roland Elder.

Elder said the airport’s communications tower did not receive any indication from the pilot that he was having trouble. The crash is being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board, which released no information Tuesday.

“It appears that the pilot was trying to maneuver the plane, judging from the position it is in on the ground,” Elder said at the crash site. “It appears that he had it somewhat under control until the point of impact. If the airplane hadn’t caught on fire, they might have walked away from it.”

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The airport’s 61-year-old maintenance supervisor, Charlie Ferranti, was out on the runway repairing an arrow light box when he looked up and noticed the small plane “wobbling in the air.”

“I immediately notified the tower and said, ‘Someone’s going down!’ ” said Ferranti, who immediately jumped into a truck along with airport employee Rudy Padilla and headed toward where he thought the plane might land.

“It was the worst thing I have ever seen,” said Padilla, who began working at the airport two months ago.

Several employees at Classic Metal Works, a nearby auto repair shop, saw the plane go down. They vaulted over a chain-link fence and ran to the scene.

Employee Ron Davis said he tried to comfort the victims.

“One of the guys looked up at me and asked, ‘Am I really bad?’ ” said Davis, 27. “I told him he was going to be OK. I said, ‘You’re alive and that’s all that matters.’ ”

Witnesses said that one of the victims, unaware that the other man had also escaped, kept screaming that his friend was still inside.

“I tried to break the windows of the plane by throwing rocks,” said Davis. “Then we saw the other guy and realized that they had both got out.”

Davis’ co-worker Anthony Robles arrived at the scene with a fire extinguisher.

“I was kind of in shock because I had never seen anything like that before,” said Robles, 29. “Those planes fly over every day in every direction. I was just wondering if one was ever going to go down.”

The wreckage of the plane was strewn along Raymer Avenue, which runs parallel to the railroad tracks. The plane’s right wing was completely torn off, and the 25-foot-high cement pole that the plane had struck was knocked to the ground.

The plane spun on its belly and stopped about 50 feet from where it had hit the ground.

Elder said the pilot was following the airport’s voluntary “preferred safety plan” by taking off over the railroad tracks to avoid housing and to cut down on the amount of noise to area residents.

“The plan is to follow the railroad tracks if you are in trouble so there is less of a chance of hitting anything,” Elder said. “It is the route we suggest.”

There have been 22 crashes at or near Fullerton Municipal Airport since 1985, killing five people and injuring 10, all aboard planes. The airport opened in 1927.

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The last crash to occur near the airport was in December, 1992, when a single-engine plane crash-landed about a minute after takeoff.

That crash was the third within a two-month period near the airport, which is just inside the northwest corner of Fullerton next to Buena Park.

Those crash-landings led then-Buena Park Mayor Rhonda J. McCune, in whose city two of the 1992 crashes had occurred, to suggest that the airport be closed, or that takeoffs and landings over Buena Park be banned at the least.

Elder, however, has steadfastly defended the airport’s safety record, and said no one on the ground has ever been injured or killed in a Fullerton Airport-related crash.