On April 17, 2009, at about 5:10 p.m., El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office personnel responded to a report of an airplane crash in El Dorado Hills.
Responding law enforcement and Fire/Rescue units located the site of the crash on
Crown Drive just west of El Dorado Hills Boulevard. This area is a moderately
developed residential sub-division and the impact was in-between two residences. No structures where damaged or involved. The wreckage was of a single engine Sportsman GS-2 Experimental aircraft. One person was pronounced dead at the scene. No other persons are believed to have occupied the airplane at the time of the crash.
The identity of the decedent will not be released until identification has been made and next of kin have been notified.
The National Transportation Safety Board has been notified and will, in conjunction withthe El Dorado County Sheriff’s Coroner’s Unit, conduct an investigation into the cause of the incident.
Greg Michael, a local Federal Aviation Administration official, examines the wreckage of the plane that crashed into an El Dorado Hills driveway Friday.
The first sound was of an engine sputtering and trees snapping.
Dirk Comstock-Ervin looked up from his El Dorado Hills yard late Friday afternoon to the shocking sight of a plane nose-diving into his neighbor's driveway.
"You could hear the engine going, 'Pop, pop!' " Comstock-Ervin said.
Then came the explosion, the fire, the neighbors with water hoses, but to no avail.
The pilot, who remained unidentified Friday night, was ejected 20 feet from the burning wreck and pronounced dead by firefighters at the scene on Crown Drive, a curving, tree-shrouded hillside street just off El Dorado Hills Boulevard.
The crash occurred at 5:10 p.m. as residents arrived home from work.
It could have been much worse, sheriff's officials said.
The plane slammed into a stone planter a few feet from two homes. A resident of the closer house was home but was uninjured, fire officials said.
"It's really amazing something like this happens and no one else is hurt," said El Dorado County Sheriff's Sgt. Phil Chovanec.
Chovanec said it will take until at least Tuesday to identify the pilot through fingerprint and dental records.
"We can't say until we have it confirmed," he said.
Federal aviation records indicate the plane is a new, home-built kit plane, owned and built by Thomas Alexander, 60, of Wilton.
When contacted by The Bee, Alexander's wife, Karen, said she had not heard about the crash and said she would go to the scene.
Alexander, who has both a pilot's license and a plane repairman's certificate, registered the Sportsman GS-2 single-engine aircraft for flight only last month, records show.
The plane is classified as experimental, said Josh Cawthra, an aviation accident inspector for the National Transportation Safety Board who will oversee the crash investigation.
"These experimental amateur-built aircraft are fairly common," he said.
Cawthra said the planes must be inspected and certified as airworthy by the Federal Aviation Administration or federally approved inspectors before they are allowed to be flown.
Federal investigators were at the crash site Friday evening, and Cawthra said a preliminary determination of the cause of the crash will be posted in the next week.
A full investigation, however, could take up to a year, he said.
Cawthra said he will have remains of the plane, which was shattered on impact, removed to a secure spot for further investigation.
Tests on the pilot will include a toxicology assessment, and a review of the pilot's health records and flight history.
The crash occurred in warm, calm weather. Many residents of the hillside heard its approach.
"You could hear the plane get louder and closer, and after that you could hear sputtering and pops," said Leah Bernard, who lives a block away from the crash site. "I saw the impact and a light gray plume of smoke came up, then a charcoal plume of smoke."
Bernard said the plane fell nose first in a diagonal direction before crashing. "It was a complete explosion."
Clayton Clark, who lives two houses away, drove up right after the crash.
"People aren't sure if he was trying to land on a street," Clark said. "The plane basically disintegrated. The only thing left was a wing and a tail section.
"It's a miracle nobody else got hurt. The pilot might have done a good job of avoiding houses."
Several neighbors with hoses fought a small fire in the wreckage.
"I hear they were doing pretty good," said Battalion Chief Brad Ballenger of the El Dorado Hills Fire Department.
At nightfall, the crash site was lit up by the headlights of an El Dorado County sheriff's van as investigators, including one from the FAA, combed through the wreckage.
The pilot's body was still covered in a yellow tarp near the remains of his tail section. Around him, the trees were blackened by the fire, which also partially consumed a parked car nearby.
Neighbor Ron Wikel said the crash might have been much worse if it had happened just six months ago.
"That planter didn't go in until six months ago," he said. "The plane would have skipped right into the house."
Map of crash site:
A woman at the scene is surrounded by El Dorado County sheriff's officials.
Emergency personnel examine the El Dorado Hills crash site on Friday. Records identified the plane as a Sportsman GS-2 that owner Thomas Alexander built from a kit.
