30 years later: looking back at Fresno's worst plane crash

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- December 14, 1994. It was just before noon in the City of Fresno.

Two pilots, who had been contracted to provide war game training for Air National Guard pilots, were wrapping up their flight and preparing to land in Fresno when an engine on their modified Learjet suddenly caught fire.

Both pilots frantically tried to diagnose the problem, but the plane went down.

First, clipping a light pole before smashing into an apartment complex.

The pilots, Richard Anderson and Brad Sexton, were killed and 21 people on the ground were injured.

"What happened is going to stay with me. Just the explosion itself... it's something that will never go away,"

Every available first responder in the city rushed to the scene.

When firefighters arrived, debris was scattered everywhere.

A jet engine, still on fire, was lying in the middle of the street.

Jim Patterson was only about a year into being Fresno's mayor at the time of the crash. He recalls the day as a "baptism by fire."

"It was just stunning to come up on the scene to see that we are jet that hit Olive went two blocks long," Patterson recalled.

The crash thrust Fresno onto the national stage.

"We must've had half a dozen of these big satellite trucks and they were all feeding live. Everybody was reporting and, you know in a rush, and oh my goodness look what happened in all, and I really felt that my responsibility was to calm the messaging down a bit," Patterson said.

The plane narrowly avoided Ewing Elementary School on Olive, just east of Chestnut.

"We were dismissing our kids and we heard what sounded like a jet plane. Like a trashcan or something going right through. It was a screeching sound that went right over our classrooms," Ewing Elementary teachers Dawn Loyd and Kim Vazquez said.

Action News spoke with a student 10 years ago, who was in 3rd grade at the time, watching the crash from inside his classroom.

"I said hey there is something in the sky and realized there was a big thing of smoke and a plane flying across as he got a little lower," former student Marty McClintok said.

The library now bears the names of the pilots who did all they could to avoid crashing into the school.

"We all lost no life, except of those two pilots and the reason why we didn't lose any life is because those two pilots determined that they were going to miss the populated areas and basically they use olive as sort of a substitute runway," Patterson said.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that faulty wiring, along with improper maintenance and inspection of the aircraft, had caused the crash.

Phoenix Air, the company that owned the plane, was forced to pay millions out to those impacted.

$12 million went to a woman named Blondie Davis, who was burned over 60 percent of her body.

"Blondie was in her apartment and she was getting ready to go somewhere and the engine came into her bathroom on fire while she was getting ready and burned her," attorney Rick Watters said.

Three decades later and it's still the worst aviation accident Fresno has ever seen.

While the NTSB praised the city's emergency response, it led to lasting changes.

"One of the lessons that we learned is that we needed to synthesize those radio frequencies and that was one of the initiative that I put forward after that incident," Patterson said.

Memories of the tragic day continue to live on in the minds and hearts of Fresnans.

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