MASS, Hyannia - Jet Flight's Bumpy End, Fuel Poses Threat to Drinking Water

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Jet passenger relates flight's bumpy end

Crews haul the plane out of the parking lot, but spilled fuel poses a threat to drinking water and Hyannis Harbor.

By SUSAN MILTON - MARCH, 19, 2000

HYANNIS - Rodney Chase was nearly home on St. Patrick's Day when he realized his corporate jet was running out of room at Barnstable Municipal Airport. As the globetrotting No. 2 executive at BP-Amoco, the fifth-largest corporation in the world, Chase often flies in and out of Hyannis between his Chatham home and his work around the United States. This time, he noticed the stormy weather and saw the snowy runway as the Falcon 900 landed, and he watched as the jet rolled past a number of familiar buildings. "I realized that we were not going to stop on the runway," Chase said yesterday in a telephone interview. "I just tightened my seat belt, and adopted the bracing position, as we are well taught to do. We obviously left the runway. I felt us bumping across the rough ground, and then we stopped." To everyone's amazement, no one was seriously hurt Friday as the jet crashed through the airport's chain-link perimeter fence, across busy Route 28, and parked itself among the scattering cars in the T.J. Maxx Plaza. Two people were taken to the hospital Friday, treated and released after their cars were hit by debris trailed by the jet, Barnstable police Lt. Robert Murphy said.

Crews for Clean Harbor Environmental Services worked through the night and yesterday to contain and sop up 1,000 to 1,200 gallons of jet fuel that leaked from the plane's damaged wing and belly fuel tanks, through cracks in the parking lot paving and, via storm drains, into Hyannis Harbor. "The fact that (the plane) could cross Route 28, by far the busiest road on Cape Cod, and the busiest stretch of that road, is phenomenal," Murphy said. Officials have started to reconstruct the accident that occurred about 6:02 p.m. Friday, according to the airport's traffic controllers. After the accident, the plane's flight engineer, Jay Logan, said the jet touched down and then slid off the end of the runway. "It was just too slippery. We couldn't stop," he told the Cape Cod Times.

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What investigators know so far The preliminary scenario, as reconstructed at a news conference yesterday, is as follows: A few minutes before the Falcon landed, two pilots in other planes had reported "poor" braking conditions as they landed safely on the airport's other runway, stretching southeast to northwest, National Transportation Safety Board investigator Steve Demko said. Going to the next lowest category, "nil" braking, would close the runway, airport manager John McDonald said. McDonald said he didn't yet know when runways had last been inspected or sanded, but after the reports from the two planes, airport maintenance crews were heading out to test the runways. This was at the time of the accident. "Timing is everything," he said. At the pilot's request, the Falcon jet was cleared by the Hyannis tower for a landing by instruments on the airport's northeast-southwest runway, Runway 24. It was the only aircraft to use that runway yesterday. Neither McDonald nor Demko knew why the pilot chose that runway. "That will be in my interview with the pilot," Demko said. The choice meant the plane would be landing with the wind at its back. The winds were 23 knots, gusting to 34 knots (or 26 mph gusting to 40 mph), out of the north. Judging from skid marks in the snow, Demko said, the jet landed 2,700 feet down the 5,400-foot runway. Is that enough room? Demko said he couldn't speculate, and that would be part of his investigation into the aircraft's history, maintenance and operation, along with runway conditions and the role of gusty winds and low visibility. The flight and data recorders have been recovered from the wrecked plane. The sliding plane also demolished the runway's antenna array, used to guide planes in for a landing by instruments. The array was replaced a few months ago after it was hit by another plane that overshot the runway. "It's miraculous that nobody was hurt," Chase said. He said he made the effort to return the Times call "primarily to say how sorry I am that this incident occurred to people who thought their lives here would be quieter than that. The plane must have given a scare to a few people as they saw it sliding toward them." The accident also blew Chase's low profile on Cape Cod, where he and his wife have lived for three years. The company executive, 56, has given speeches in Atlanta, London and Paris in recent months about the company's anti-pollution programs. He spent two hours Friday night watching people clean up fuel spilled from his company's aircraft, and he returned to the T.J. Maxx parking lot yesterday after he picked up his bags at the airport. "It's a very important subject to me," Chase said, "which is why I was keen to spend some time with them." The pilot Friday night identified the jet's owner as BP-Amoco, and Hyannis fire officials called the company's Chicago headquarters Friday night so that a cleanup contractor could be hired. The company will be liable for the cost of the cleanup. With Chase and Logan were pilot Brad Vineyard, 50, of Woodridge, Ill., and co-pilot Charles Neville, 50, of Chicago. Demko didn't know who was at the jet's controls during the landing. "And God must have had a seat on that plane," Deputy Hyannis Fire Chief Dean Melanson said. "At that location, it's difficult to get a car, much less a plane, across Route 28." The acrid smell of jet fuel lingered yesterday in the parking lot and in Hyannis Harbor, a reminder of the threat of explosion that caused the evacuation of the shopping center and nearby restaurants Friday night. With foam and sand, firefighters cut the immediate risk of fire, but the spill still poses a risk to drinking water and coastal water. Less volatile than aviation gas, jet fuel is refined kerosene, Hyannis Fire Capt. Eric Farrenkopf said, "but the potential is always there. You just don't know what's going to happen, as with any plane crash you've seen."

Fuel follows storm drains Within an hour of the accident Friday, snow melt had carried the fuel through storm drains into Hyannis Harbor. People from the plaza to Main Street reported the pungent, long-lasting odor. Clean Harbor used booms to try to contain the fuel near the drain's outlet at the harbor and absorbent pads to sop up the fuel yesterday. "There's still some cleanup to be done in the harbor," said Chief Richard Packard of the state Department of Environmental Protection's emergency response team. Cleanup crews looked in manhole covers and culverts yesterday to find and vacuum out fuel, Deputy Chief Melanson said, and by 11 a.m., "the vast majority were done." For the town, which owns the land that the plaza is build on, as well as the airport, the spill revealed that oil and other contaminants find their way into Hyannis Harbor. The town also has learned that some older catch basins in the parking lot dump runoff into the ground. New businesses, such as the proposed transportation terminal on nearby Main Street, are required to collect, contain and treat such runoff in the area, a watershed for drinking water. After the cleanup of fuel, "our goal was to get the plane out of the parking lot by daybreak so we could open Route 28 to traffic and avoid disturbing all the businesses," Hyannis Fire Capt. Joe Cabral said yesterday. He was among the 55 firefighters spread between the plaza and the harbor, some until 8 a.m. yesterday. To the potentially major accident, Yarmouth's Fire Department sent two engines and an ambulance. Centerville-Osterville-Marstons Mills sent an engine, Dennis covered Yarmouth's fire station, and the airport sent its crash crew. The Red Cross provided food and refreshments through the cold night to the crews at the scene. After daybreak, the plane was lifted onto a flatbed truck by a crane and two tow trucks and moved to a parking space at the airport. "It came out through the fence. It went back through the fence," Farrenkopf said. Route 28 reopened before 7 a.m.. Once the plane cleared the runways, the airport reopened, ending a short delay for early-morning flights. Before the accident closed the airport for the night, the airlines had stopped flying because of the weather. Route 28 was clogged yesterday by sightseers. They watched Reliable Fence Co. replace the airport's perimeter fence by noon and Clean Harbor's bulldozers scrape piles of used sand out of the parking lot. Mitchell's Steak House, evacuated in midmeal Friday night, was open for lunch and serving its ample supply of corned beef and cabbage. "It's St. Pattie's Day all over again," said host Tony Silva. Copyright ) 2000 Cape Cod Times. All rights reserved.

http://www.capecodonline.com/cctimes/jetpassenger19.htm



-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), March 19, 2000


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