Chino Hills Plane Crash Kills 4 Firefighters

Four off-duty Corona firefighters, at least three of whom were Orange County residents, perished early Tuesday when their single-engine aircraft crashed and burned in rugged country near Chino Hills State Park.

The four, with Michael A. Chantry of San Clemente as pilot, had taken off from Corona Municipal Airport for a long-planned ski vacation at Lake Tahoe.

A witness called authorities shortly before 5 a.m. to report that he had heard the Beech Bonanza circling overhead, then heard a crash and saw a fireball. The crash ignited a small grass fire, which extinguished itself.

The crash site was within the city limits of Chino Hills, but so remote that it took emergency crews nearly an hour and a half to negotiate the terrain of saw-toothed ridges and sheer cliffs and locate the wreckage in the predawn darkness.

They discovered the bodies of four men, along with clothing and other paraphernalia that bore the markings of the men’s employer, the Corona Fire Department.

Corona fire officials identified the deceased as: Chantry, 36, an employee since 1985; Donald Butts, 28, of Irvine, a firefighter since 1993; John Y. Jefferies III, 25, of Santa Ana, hired in 1996; and Daniel Alleman, 27, a firefighter since 1994. Officials could not provide Alleman’s city of residence.

All four were married, officials said.

Jefferies wed his junior-high school sweetheart in Santa Ana just four months to the day before his death, his mother, Kee Jefferies, said Tuesday night.

The Santa Ana native decided when he was just 3 years old that he wanted to be a paramedic, his mother said. He later volunteered at the UCLA pediatric care unit.

“He adored children,” she said, adding that she was concerned about how to break the news of her son’s death to neighborhood youth who looked up to him.

Chantry and his wife, Lorrie, and daughter, Courtney, moved to San Clemente last summer, and his impact on the close-knit neighborhood was immediate. Mary Evans said her son was so inspired by Chantry that he joined the Coast Guard.

Neighbor Mitch Linder, fighting back tears, described Chantry as “a role model to the kids, very much respected by the adults, absolutely the finest family man I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.”

Butts went to Irvine High School and studied fire science at Rancho Santiago College. He previously worked at the Orange County Fire Authority, said his father, Floyd Butts, 58, of Irvine.

“He liked to put out fires. He lived to be a fireman,” his father said. “He liked people. Everyone liked him.”

Steve Bull, a commercial helicopter pilot based at Corona Municipal Airport, the airfield from which the plane took off, identified Chantry as the pilot.

Linder said Chantry owned the plane and that something must have gone wrong because “there could be no chance of pilot error.” A National Transportation Safety Board investigator from Los Angeles was at the scene to try to determine the cause.

Corona Fire Chief Michael Warren said news of the deaths--the first of active firefighters in the department’s more than 100-year history--was “having a devastating impact” on the 102-member department.

“We live together. We work together. We share each other’s lives quite closely. This is a very personal and difficult time for all of us,” Warren said.

Fire Capt. John Medina sobbed as he spoke with reporters in the garage of one of the city’s five fire stations.

“We’re trying to come to grips with it,” he said of the deaths. “We’re rattled. . . . It’s such a small department, you get to know everyone really, really well.”

Times staff writer Deborah Schoch and correspondent Chris Ceballos contributed to this report.