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Headlines July 03, 2006
Plane crashes into empty truck; 2 dead
The Associated Press
MONTROSE — Two people were killed when a small plane slammed into the unoccupied cab of a tractor-trailer rig parked on a residential street and burst into flames Monday, fire officials said.
Montrose Fire Protection Battalion Chief Allen Weese said both victims were on the plane. There were no other passengers aboard, and no one on the ground was hurt, he said.
The plane, the truck and a pickup caught fire, but the flames were extinguished and none of the nearby houses caught fire, Fire Chief Bob Pistor said.
“There was this big bang and my wife yells, ’Oh my God, the truck is on fire,’” said Levi Hawks, a long-haul trucker who owns the tractor-trailer cab.
Hawks said the cab was parked in front of his home. He said neither he nor his wife saw the collision.
Nancy Weese, who lives across the street, said the fire was so big it obscured the plane.
“At first we didn’t know there was a plane there, because of the fire,” she said.
She said burning fuel spilled onto her lawn.
Weese, who is the mother of the fire battalion chief, said the plane would have smashed into her house if Hawks’ truck had not been parked where it was.
“I just thank the Lord the truck was there,” she said.
The neighborhood is below the flight path to Montrose Regional Airport, Montrose County sheriff’s spokesman Dick Deines said.
The airport, about 180 miles southwest of Denver, was the scene of a November 2004 crash that killed the son of NBC Sports executive Dick Ebersol and two others. The National Transportation Safety Board said ice on the wings was a factor in the crash.
Monday’s crash occurred shortly after 10 a.m. MDT, said Gary Mayer, the regional duty officer for the Federal Aviation Administration in Seattle.
It was the first fatal crash in Montrose since the Ebersol crash