Warbird Information Exchange

One dead as plane slams into luxury B.C. condo
PATRICK BRETHOUR and ROD MICKLEBURGH AND MARSHA LEDERMAN
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
October 20, 2007 at 1:03 AM EDT

Vancouver, Richmond — For a moment just after 4 o'clock Friday afternoon, Aaron Kennington wondered why the twin-engine Piper Seneca was flying so low, and so slow, over residential Richmond.
And then the small aircraft banked sharply to the right, dropping out of sight behind the two-storey grocery store.

"I just had that feeling — something is really wrong," said Mr. Kennington, a commercial pilot who had just left his nearby hotel for a stroll.
Moneyy Noyola, 13, was in her bedroom watching a movie on TV when she heard a "chug-a chug" sound. She looked outside and saw the plane. "There was smoke kind of coming out of it and then it went a little bit low and then up and then low."

That's all she saw. She says she saw it for about two seconds. "I never thought a plane would ever hit this building, ever."
Then came the dull thud as the small craft crashed into the upper floors of a luxurious high-rise condominium in Richmond, tearing a gash into the side of the building.

It was Vancouver International Airport's first crash in more than a decade.
The pilot is confirmed dead, and two building residents were injured — one seriously — with the RCMP saying two people were in the plane when it crashed.

Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie told local radio that there may have been an electrical failure on the plane and that it lost contact with the air-control tower just before the collision. The craft took off from the airport's south runway.

Mr. Kennington — who has used the same runway and flown the same model aircraft — said he believes the pilot was trying to return to the airport, but didn't have enough altitude or speed.

"The pilot was terrifically low," he said.

Rosario Gardens Tower B, one of a pair of residential towers in the heart of Richmond, was struck. William Kwong was sitting in his apartment in Tower A and he found it hard to believe a plane had actually hit the building across from him.

"I was watching TV. I heard something overhead. I heard flying and then a bang. I thought something hit my building but when I went outside, I saw it was the other tower.

"I'm now standing on my balcony," he said over the phone. "I can't see any plane. I don't see any wreckage. There was grey smoke coming from that apartment ¡K but it is hard to believe a plane vanished inside that building."

When the plane struck the building, psychiatrist Jas Bhopal was in his office on the ground floor about to see his 4 o'clock patient when he heard a vibration. "I thought maybe a car had hit the building," he said. He went out to investigate and detected a "funny smell" which he describes as smelling like dust as opposed to fire.

"When I looked up on the ninth or 10th floor there was a big gaping hole, 12 feet high and probably 20 feet across. I couldn't see any evidence of a plane — no smoke, no fire."

But then he saw something else.

"There was an old lady, a senior Chinese lady, dressed in red. She was in distress, waving her arms, shouting. I asked one of the fellows beside me who's Chinese, 'What's she saying?' ... The person said, 'She's saying 'help, help, help.'ƒ|"

Dr. Bhopal told the man beside him to shout out that help was on the way, and that she should leave. He also ensured that someone called 911. Dr. Bhopal said he was relieved to see firefighters in the apartment next door to her. But then he was told to clear the area by emergency officials.

Tower B was evacuated but residents remained in the adjacent tower. The area was quickly swarmed by ambulances, fire department vehicles and police.

Bob McAfee, who works nearby, said he heard a loud bang but didn't think anything of it until emergency vehicles started to stream into the area.

" A guy told me a plane crashed into the building. I could see there was a pretty big hole in the side of the building and water was pouring out of the hole. But it must have been a small plane because the damage wasn't extensive."

Airport spokeswoman Sue Ross confirmed that a small Seneca plane, a two-engine design, collided on takeoff with an apartment building shortly after 4 p.m., but she provided few details. Richmond fire rescue has been dispatched and a triage area set up, she said.
One witness said the plane went right into the apartment building "nose down. It was unbelievable."

He told a local radio station that a woman appeared moments later in the gaping hole in the struck apartment "yelling and screaming for help. People shouted at her to get back from the edge. It looked like a missile hit it."

The witness said he believed half the plane was lodged inside the apartment while half tumbled to the ground. "It was unreal. You see this kind of thing on TV, but you never expect to see it in real life."
Other witnesses described the hole as five to eight metres wide.
"The plane kept going down, down. The pilot couldn't control it. It hit the building and then it was falling down," said one, while another said he had seen the plane circling before it hit the apartment as if the pilot was trying to rid the aircraft of fuel.

With reports from Mark Hume and Ian Bailey