Auburn plane crash injures four

Cessna hits pole, tumbles into car lot

Thursday, April 13, 2000

By JACK HOPKINS and MIKE BARBER

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS

AUBURN -- Howard Kidd was sitting in a dealership along "auto row" when he spotted the plane. It had just taken off from Auburn Municipal Airport, and Kidd and two others noticed something was wrong.

"The man next to me said, 'My God, that plane is flying too low,'" Kidd recalled.

Moments later, as people from the ground watched, the plane hit a utility pole, broke in half, then tumbled to the ground.

A heavy insulator fell from the utility pole and dented the roof of a passing vehicle. Two people inside suffered minor injuries, as did a pedestrian who was struck by flying debris. The two men inside the plane escaped. Neither was seriously hurt.

The midday accident left a widespread section of the city without electricity and tied up traffic for several hours.

The Cessna aircraft came to rest about 20 feet from busy Auburn Way North and landed about 50 yards from a crowded day-care center.

Auburn police said the plane was registered to a leasing company. There were conflicting reports on whether the small plane was being piloted by a student at the time of the 1:50 p.m. crash.

Like Kidd, Amy Stuart also was working at a car dealership when she first noticed that something was wrong.

"It was so low you could almost jump up and reach it," she said. "I saw the pilot crank it really sharp to one side. He hit the pole and the plane flipped over, and everything came crashing down."

As gasoline poured out of the plane, mechanics from the Valley Pontiac-Buick-GMC dealership rushed out with fire extinguishers.

Meanwhile, the pilot, Thomas Archer II, of Covington, and his passenger, Christopher Hill, 20, waited in the car dealership's office for medics. They were treated at Auburn Regional Medical Center for neck and back injuries and were released.

Authorities did not release the names of the two people in the car or the name of the injured pedestrian.

Mitch Barker, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said the plane's pilot told an investigator the aircraft lost power before it crashed.

But witnesses said it did not appear that the plane, which had just taken off from the municipal airport less than a half mile away, was having engine trouble.

Kidd, who works at Auburn Volkswagen/Subaru, said the plane was traveling noticeably slower than most planes that take off from the airport.

Another man said the plane may have tried to turn too soon after takeoff.

"The first thing I noticed was the airplane going in a different direction from the route they normally take when they leave the airport," said Rich Swet, an employee at Valley Pontiac-Buick-GMC. Swet was standing about 25 yards away from where the plane crashed.

"It started bearing right instead of going straight, and then it started losing altitude and hit the power line," Swet said. "I saw the pole break and the plane flipped over.

"There was a big kaboom coming from the transformers blowing when the power pole broke. Everybody was frantically running around."

http://www.postintelligencer.com/local/crsh13.shtml

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), April 13, 2000