Crowding, Crashes Have Created Risky Mix for Air Bases in Arizona

William Ross was driving home from work when he heard the explosion and the sound of something falling.

It was the only warning he would get before a 370-gallon fuel tank jettisoned by an F-16 fighter came crashing down, clipping the bed of his pickup truck. Ross’ vehicle came to a dead stop--totaled--while the flaming plane hurtled into a distant farm field.

The 27-year-old roofer was later diagnosed with vertigo and he suffered other injuries, though none required hospitalization, said his lawyer, Robert Ramirez.

“Originally, we envisioned that this was a fluke,” Ramirez said.

But as development and a growing number of people flock to areas around Luke Air Force Base in this western suburb of Phoenix and Arizona’s other military airports, the danger may be increasing for both residents and military bases alike.

Luke officials are quick to point out the flight instructor and student aboard the F-16 that went down near Ross on Jan. 7 were following emergency guidelines when they dumped the plane’s fuel tanks and guided the aircraft away from development. Neither pilot was seriously injured.

“We’re still training pilots safely,” said Cris Brownlow, Luke’s community planner. “But the more people you get out here, the more exposure you have.”

When Luke was built in 1941, the base was a lonely island in the middle of a patch of undeveloped land. The site was selected because it was 25 miles from town and largely uninhabited, Brownlow said. There was one bridge in and out of Luke and one in and out of the now-closed Williams Air Force Base in Mesa.

Even through the 1970s, few people but farmers and migrant workers lived in the open areas surrounding Luke, the world’s largest F-16 training base, origination point of more than 100,000 sorties a year.

But that has changed. Rows of stucco homes with red tile roofs stand within miles of the base now, and a steady stream of development is expected to keep marching west from the Phoenix metro area.

It threatens to create a situation similar to the one at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson. There, a housing development sits right on the base’s northwest side, directly under the flight path.

Geno Patriarcha, chief community planner at Davis-Monthan, said aircraft must fly over dense development shortly after takeoff. Over the years, a number of airplane parts have dropped over developed areas, but no serious accidents have occurred.

So far in the last six months, five Luke-based F-16s have crashed--four of them because of engine trouble. None has caused any serious injury.

Terry Hansen, assistant airspace manager at Luke, said the jets pose no significant danger to area residents.

He said he has lived directly north of the base for 13 years and has never worried about his safety.

Other Luke neighbors seem to agree.

“It’s nice knowing they’re up there,” said Tina Watkins, who lives several miles south of the base. “I don’t think anyone would worry about it any more than driving, where people can hit you, pull a gun on you, carjack you.”

Dale Deal, a 40-year resident of the area, feels the same way.

Though he watched the most recent F-16 go down on March 16, Deal said he feels safer here than he would in downtown Phoenix.

Even if the encroachment doesn’t endanger residents, the burgeoning population in this area could pose a danger to the base.

Although no one here is exactly sure what all the criteria are for determining which military bases are targeted for closure, most military officials acknowledge that community support, or lack of it, plays a part in a base’s future. Many attribute Williams Air Force Base’s September 1993 closure in part to encroachment and noise complaints.

And even though noise maps, zoning recommendations and military airport disclosure forms are designed to minimize incompatible construction near military bases, residents moving into nearby neighborhoods are not always fully aware of what kind of noise they’ll face.

“You pick out a house on Saturday and Sunday. You look at the tile on Saturday, move out there on a weekend, maybe a long weekend. But those are usually federal holidays, so we’re off. And guess what? On Monday, when you’re out having a barbecue, you have 200 jets going overhead,” Hansen said.

The number of complaints at Luke has been fairly steady over the last couple of years. The base received about 120 complaints last year.

Hansen said the calls often are just residents wondering why they heard a certain noise.

“We just have that 10% who don’t care about the $1 billion we put into the economy,” he said.

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Recent Crashes

A look at the most recent F-16 crashes out of Luke Air Force Base:

March 16: Student pilot ejects safely from a single-seat F-16 before it hits the ground, strewing wreckage in the desert just north of Interstate 10.

Feb. 3: A jet flown by a student pilot crashes near Gila Bend during a surface attack training mission. The pilot ejects safely.

Jan. 7: Flight instructor and student eject safely over a farm field after they begin having engine trouble. They dump a fuel tank, per procedure, which hits a pickup truck. The driver is injured but does not require hospitalization.

Dec. 15, 1998: An F-16 piloted by a flight instructor on a solo training mission crashes near Aztec, about 40 miles west of Gila Bend.

Oct. 22, 1998: A student pilot and an instructor bump jets in midair, causing the student to eject before the F-16 crashes into the desert about 10 miles north of the base.

Associated Press