Cargo plane makes miracle landing in neighborhood
Published: June 14, 2005
An old-fashioned cargo plane suffering engine trouble slammed onto a residential street in northeast Fort Lauderdale on Monday, sliding 100 yards on its belly before skidding to a halt and exploding into a fireball. (see photo pop-up)
The plane’s three occupants — including the pilot, a Vietnam veteran who said he had handled rough landings before — scrambled out with minor injuries, and no one on the ground was seriously hurt.
“[It was] a flashback from Vietnam. You just do what you have to do,” said pilot Charles Riggs, who said he tried to save lives by landing on the street. “We were going for a big wide spot we could aim for, and then we saw trees, and that was good as well.”
Added co-pilot Charles Wirt: “I’m just glad we didn’t take anyone else out.”
Local residents were more than just glad. They were incredulous.
“It’s hard to imagine describing a plane accident as a miracle, but the fact that nobody was killed when a plane crashed into a neighborhood can only be described as a miracle,” Fort Lauderdale City Manager George Gretsas said.
One home sustained roof and tile damage after being clipped by the wings. At least a half dozen cars parked on the street were damaged, one seared by flames, and a tree caught on fire, police said.
In a neighborhood with North Ridge Medical Center, Northeast High School and other buildings, officials said the incident could have erupted into a full-blown disaster.
The twin-engine, 12-ton plane, a version of the vintage DC-3 airliner, took off from Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport at 3:50 p.m., groaning with 3,200 pounds of granite in its cargo bay, bound for Marsh Harbour in the Bahamas, authorities said.
When it was 300 feet in the air, tower controllers saw smoke coming from the left engine and tried to alert the crew by radio, but got no response, said José Obregon, accident investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.
The plane crashed at 3:51 p.m., skidding down Northeast 56th Street, before coming to rest near the intersection of Northeast 18th Avenue in the Coral Ridge Isles neighborhood.
That isn’t far from the busy intersection of Federal Highway and Commercial Boulevard, an area teaming with office buildings, schools, medical complexes, churches and shopping centers. In the explosion, the tail separated from the main fuselage, and the main cabin was ripped apart.
The occupants, Riggs of Pembroke Pines, Wirt of Miami and passenger Hector Espinoza of Lantana, escaped from an overhead cockpit hatch. About 10 seconds later, the plane burst into flames, witnesses said.
Other than some minor burns, scrapes and banged-up knees, none of the three appeared to be hurt seriously, but they still were taken to nearby Holy Cross Hospital for treatment, police said.
Roberto Colina, 30, was driving his car when he saw the plane angling toward him. He swerved to the right and avoided the plane by about 30 feet.
“I’m thinking, `Oh, my God, I can’t believe it,’” he said.
Roberto Rowen, 33, heard a bump then a horrible screeching noise. The next moment, he looked out his apartment window and saw the plane slam down within 150 feet of his front porch.
He said he saw the three occupants run from the plane to avoid the explosion. Rowen offered them water and a soda. He said the pilot appeared to be calm and collected.
“They said the left engine didn’t work. He was trying to keep the plane straight, but he kept losing speed and altitude, so he looked for a spot to land on 56th Street,” he said.
Rowen said he shook the pilot’s hand and thanked him for not hitting his apartment complex.
“He said, `No problem, no problem.’ He said he’d flown in Vietnam. He said, `I’ve done this before.’”
Rowen said the area quickly became hot from burning fuel.
“I didn’t know what to do. I grabbed my stuff and grabbed my cat. I went to the door and the flames were so hot, I went back inside. I could throw a baseball and hit the nose of the plane,” he said.
Within minutes, firefighters swarmed the scene and hit the burning wreckage with foam and water.
Letter carrier Angie Hampton, 41, had just parked her postal vehicle when she heard the plane coming in.
“The noise was so loud, my truck started shaking. I got out of the truck and looked up and the plane was right over me. I hit the ground. The heat alone, it was incredible,” she said.
Branches and other debris slammed into Hampton, but she was not hurt. When she looked up, she saw that the plane had hit some trees before hitting her truck.
“If the trees weren’t there, they would have taken the whole truck with them — and me,” she said.
Enrico Mildro, 38, said he heard a noise “like a machine gun,” took one look up at the plane and knew it was going down.
“I watched it go about 50 feet over my house, 25 feet over the power line,” he said. “The pilot did the best he could.”
“People were shoving, saying, `Run!’” said neighbor Otto Sajovitz. “The flames went up 20 yards or more.”
After the crash, more than 60 residents crowded to the scene, walking dogs, pushing baby strollers and standing behind yellow police tape.
Among the bystanders was Linda Birde, president of the Lake Escapes Improvement Association. She said a coalition of associations have fought Executive Airport’s expansion, fearing this kind of accident.
“This is our worst nightmare right here,” she said. “We came very close to losing children in our community.”
By the evening, all that could be seen of the plane was its cracked and blackened fuselage and broken tree limbs.
Pilot Riggs’ niece visited her uncle at the hospital after the crash.
“He did good,” she said. “His engine blew up. We saw it on TV, and we thought, `Oh, God, everybody’s dead.’ But they’re OK.”
The plane was registered to John W. Andrews of Wichita Falls, Texas. But Air Pony Express, a Pembroke Pines on-demand cargo company, was thought to be the operator. Riggs is listed as the president of that firm.
Technically called a Douglas Super R4D-8, the plane was originally a Navy version of the Douglas DC-3, a tail-dragging airliner that dominated the skies in the 1930s and 1940s. It is only one of six still registered with the Federal Aviation Administration, agency officials said.
It was the second old airliner converted for modern-day cargo hauling, to crash in the past six months. On Dec. 4, pilots ditched a Convair 340 in an Aventura lake after taking off from Opa-locka Airport in north Miami-Dade County, narrowly missing trees, power lines, condominiums and marinas. It too was headed to the Bahamas, on a cargo run, and its two pilots escaped unhurt.
And it was the second DC-3 to take off from Executive Airport and crash into a nearby neighborhood. In June 1979, an aging DC-3 crashed shortly after takeoff from the airport and almost rammed a home on Northeast 60th Street, just east of Interstate 95. The plane’s two occupants were killed.
On Monday, Joann Monroe, Riggs’ girlfriend, said she was shopping when she got a call from Nassau asking her what happened to Riggs. She had no idea what the caller was talking about.
“I started to shake,” she said.
Then she got a call from Riggs.
“The second call was from Charlie. He said, `I’m alive. I’m OK. The plane, she’s gone.”
Monroe waited in the lobby of Holy Cross Hospital on Monday afternoon and said that Riggs had not yet had the opportunity to tell her exactly what happened.
“He’s scorched. It’ll be aches and pains tomorrow. It’s a miracle,” she said of how he landed the plane on the street. “He’s the best.”
She said Riggs, a father of four sons, has been a pilot for 44 years, flew in Vietnam and for the past five years ran Air Pony Express Inc., transporting cargo to Marsh Harbor.
“He did this flight so many times, he did it in his sleep,” she said.
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: