Under the Flight Path

When a single-engine plane plummeted into a home less than a mile from Fullerton Municipal Airport last week, Carol Varieur took more notice than most people.

The crash killed the pilot and destroyed a house whose residents were away. It was the 31st incident--involving 12 fatalities--at or near the general aviation airport in the last 15 years.

But it was the first since Varieur and her husband moved to a new development that has gone up in Buena Park just a few hundred feet from the Fullerton runway.

“It did make me think, ‘I guess a plane could crash into one of these homes,’ ” Varieur said this week while out walking her dog on the path around the community’s lake. “But all of life’s a chance.”

The Fullerton crash highlighted, once again, the dangers of busy general aviation airports in Southern California.

Residents who live beneath the flight paths are also plagued by noise, nuisance and the pollution from frequent flights. Like an annoying neighbor, the takeoffs and landings intrude into backyard barbecues, quiet mornings in the breakfast room or evenings in front of the television.

Some residents have had closer brushes.

Nate and Carol Peiman still can remember the sputtering roar of the engine, the blast that shook the house, the blare of the fire alarm.

Two years ago, the Peimans were awakened in the darkness by the thunder of a small private plane that crashed through the roof of their two-story home in Van Nuys. The nose of the aircraft plunged through their upstairs gymnasium less than 20 feet from their bedroom, then into the first-floor dining room and through the floor, where the bodies of the pilot and his wife were found.

When she heard that a doctor from neighboring Sherman Oaks was killed when his small plane crashed into the Fullerton house, Carol Peiman said she was flooded with memories of that terrible morning when she and her husband narrowly escaped death.

“I got goose bumps all over,” she said. “When I learned that no one was in the house, I said, ‘Thank God, somebody is watching over us.’ ”

Those who live near the Santa Monica Airport, one of the busiest single-runway general aviation airports in the country, must endure about 230,000 takeoffs and landings a year.

“The noise grates on your nerves like fingernails on a blackboard,” said Arne Foss, who lives just two blocks from the airport.

‘I’ve Run Out of Ideas How to Deal With It’

When Foss and his wife, Barbara, moved into the Santa Monica neighborhood of Sunset Park 31 years ago, the skies were mostly filled with small biplanes and twin-propeller aircraft flown by weekend pilots. Over the years, Fross and his family grew accustomed to the occasional plane that buzzed overhead.

“You might have had a slight interruption of conversation or a little raising of the voice,” he recalled, “but that was it.”

Within the last two years, however, Foss, 68, and his neighbors have noticed an increase in jet traffic at the airport.

“At first I thought, ‘Who is using all that fluid to light their barbecue?’ ” Foss said of the exhaust he occasionally smells from jet engines. “But I realized it was the jets.”

A retired engineer, he used to spend lazy weekend afternoons on his sun deck. He fondly recalls the Easter brunches he and his wife hosted for their church group after sunrise services. And in the winter, Christmas carolers and friends from his hiking group would gather to sip eggnog on the scenic perch. But now when Foss looks out onto his deck, he can only think of one thing: jets.

He has made many efforts to reclaim his deck. He’s installed sound-absorbing tile underneath the awning. He’s put dual-pane glass on the sliding doors leading to the deck. He’s even covered the stucco with strips of thin wood to help dampen the noise.

“I’ve run out of ideas, as an engineer, of how to deal with it,” he said. “I’ve done all I can. . . . We used to wake up to the sound of songbirds. Now we wake up to jets.”

Jason Morgan, an officer for the airport’s noise abatement program, acknowledges that jet traffic has increased. Although the airport is closely surrounded by what airport officials call “noise sensitive” residential areas, only 0.2% of all takeoffs and landings violated noise standards, Morgan said.

Residents, however, disagree with that number, citing figures from Airport Commission reports showing that although jets make up a small percentage of total operations, they are disproportionately represented in noise violations.

Morgan contends that most planes operate within the noise guidelines and that most of those pilots who do not are new to the airport. First-time violators are informed about the airport’s noise abatement program and issued a warning letter. If they continue to break the rules, they can be fined up to $500, said Morgan.

“The program is not working,” said Caroline Denyer, a mother of two who lives a block away from Foss. “They get a warning, another warning, a letter and then a fine. When you park in a red zone, you get a ticket. No one says, ‘Oh, you’re being naughty. Don’t do it again.’ ”

Residents are even more concerned by the threat of a crash. The neighborhoods around the airport--Mar Vista, Venice, Santa Monica and West Los Angeles--have experienced at least 12 crashes and seven related fatalities since 1985.

But like many general aviation airports in Southern California and around the nation, the once rural Fullerton air field increasingly has been hemmed in by homes and businesses over the years. The recent construction of the Buena Park community on a former dirt field took away the last of the open space on the perimeter of an airport that averages about 100,000 takeoffs and landings each year.

At her new home, Varieur said on most days she hears small planes buzz overhead like amplified insects--a steady stream over the 350-home community. For six months before they decided to buy there, she and her husband visited the Buena Park neighborhood every weekend.

“There are more planes on the weekends, and I think the helicopters make more noise than anything else, but it’s not bad, “ she said. “If it was a jet, forget it.”

Varieur’s upscale neighborhood--where spacious single-family homes in neutral shades of stucco can sell for more than $500,000--was opposed by the city of Fullerton and officials at the airport, which sits just beyond a sound wall at the development’s edge.

Adding Hazards for Pilots

Rod Propst, the airport’s manager, calls the decision to build the houses one of the single worst ideas for land use near an airport that he has seen. Pilots in particular objected to the expansive lake that the homes are built around, citing the danger of attracting flocks of birds to airspace shared by small planes.

When Buena Park overruled the objections, Fullerton insisted that all home buyers sign a clause acknowledging that they are aware of the airport and the noise of the airplanes.

“There’s a lot of complaints from people who live near airports about noise and everything else,” said pilot John Edwards, a Fullerton airport regular who has flown planes for more than 20 years. “But here’s a clear case of homes encroaching on us.”

Despite the latest accident, one of more than a dozen instances of planes that have either crashed or made emergency landings on residential streets over the last decade or so, most residents say it isn’t concern about safety that keeps them awake at night.

“Noise is more of a problem than worrying about planes crashing,” said Teri Lehart, who for 12 years has lived in the older community south of the airport near the latest plane crash. Van Nuys Airport, the busiest general aviation airport in the nation, averages about six times that amount. At Van Nuys, there have been 18 aviation accidents near the airport since 1985, killing eight people.

Earlier this week, airport neighbors got some relief. The Los Angeles City Council moved to sharply limit the number of new, noisy aircraft that may operate from the airport. The decision pleased many who had complained of noise for years, but it fell short of the complete ban sought by some neighbors.

After the plane that took off from the Van Nuys Airport crashed into the Peimans’ home, the couple decided to move--even after their house was rebuilt.

“I loved the house, but I just couldn’t do it,” Carol Peiman said. “Two people were killed in that house. I never could set foot in the dining room again. You count your blessings and ask yourself, ‘How many times can this happen?’ But I did not want to be there anymore. I could not handle those planes.”

‘I Could Not Handle Those Planes’

Before the crash, she said, she paid little attention to planes flying overhead and didn’t even realize they lived under a flight path less than a mile from the airport. “I knew [the airport] was there, but it never bothered me before,” she said.

The Peimans still have a chain ladder, which they set out on a second-floor balcony just two days before the crash. The ladder allowed them to scramble safely out of the house after flames licking at the stairs blocked their escape.

The couple rented a house just two doors from their damaged home so that Nate could monitor the reconstruction. But Carol found herself cringing with the drone of every engine overhead.

“I would crawl up in a ball,” she said, “and think, ‘Oh, my God. They’re going to hit us again.’ ”

A year ago, the Peimans decided they would leave the neighborhood. With the house almost finished, Nate said he “had hoped that we would move back in. But my wife was suffering too much.”

At the Porter Ranch home the couple bought in July, some of their furniture still bears signs of the crash. Carol points to repairs of burn marks on a living room sofa, decorator carpet, curio cabinet and other furnishings.

Commercial airliners en route to Los Angeles International Airport and elsewhere pass overhead at 14,500 feet altitude. Nate checked that fact before they even considered purchasing the home, about nine miles from Van Nuys Airport. Yet no matter where they are, the Peimans say they stop in their tracks and look up whenever they hear a low-flying aircraft.

They sold the Van Nuys house to a young family that had relocated from the East Coast after their own property was destroyed in a flood, Nate said. The buyers were not particularly concerned about airplanes falling from sky.

Their main concern, he said, was flooding.

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Times staff writer Miles Corwin contributed to this story.