The ceremony will be held at the Cerritos Air Disaster Memorial in the Cerritos Sculpture Garden which is located in the Civic Center. About 20 houses were either completely or partially destroyed. The exception is Wes Neallys family, which moved into the tract when it was built in 1971. We saw people in their closets that couldnt understand why they were saved and their neighbors houses blew up with the airplane, Knabe said. He also remembered the sound of ambulances. She made a telephone call to her office and returned to tell Estrada that the Cerritos City Council had voted to allocate $25,900 of the citys crash-victims fund to Alejandro and Frank Jr. Nearby, surrounded by bags of concrete and wheelbarrows, workmen are applying finishing touches such as garage-door trim to two houses on Holmes and Reva Circle, fitting windows into the completed frame of another home and hammering the last rolls of tar paper over the frame of a fourth. Then, I saw the jet nose sticking out of a wall on Carmenita Road. The remembrance will include a brief formal ceremony with the Cerritos City Council; a reading of the victims' names; a prayer for the victims and their loved ones; and a moment of silence. We will include here a bit of what she recalled from those initial moments of terror: My son Robbie (7 at the time) was standing in the garage and watched as the DC-9 plowed into the ground merely yards away. The nightmare that once regularly haunted Wes Neally--flying aboard a plane that crashes--now strikes only a couple of times a year. Fire and first responders were just arriving. The crash of . Finally, she returned to Chula Vista and, with her parents, rented a two-story town house in an attractive housing development. This post was contributed by a community member. Register for a user account. By phone Rochelle heard about the crash, but was given the impression her house had not been hit. She started crying when she described it. 82 people total lost their lives, including 64 on the DC-9, 3 on the small plane and 15 on the ground. Want to count bighorn sheep in the forest? A sharper increase in near-collisions was reflected in recent FAA statistics. They were the children of Laura Rickard and Xochiquetzaltzin Cronkhite. It was an improbable, unthinkable tragedy: Planes plunging from blue skies into a quiet, suburban neighborhood, slaughtering people in their homes, showering body parts everywhere. 82 people, including the woman's daughter, perished as a result of the midair collision. I had 16 years with one of the best mothers anybody could ever have had--granted I wanted 80 more years with her, he says, his dark eyes moist. The silvery metal tail section lay in a driveway off Gerritt Avenue, covered with blood., At nearby Concordia Lutheran Church, orange metal pieces of the massive DC-9 jetliner lay on the lawn, along with more bodies. Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Cerritos plane crash 30 years ago: You either died or you didnt, Biden expected to tighten rules on US investment in China, More Iranian schoolgirls sickened in suspected poisoning wave. Today the neighborhood looks like most neighborhoods in Cerritos, filled with tree-lined streets, well-maintained homes and trimmed lawns. Encountering friends and former neighbors was wrenching. . She had gotten an accounting job so she could help pay for his college. By Thanksgiving of that year, the residents who survived moved back into newly rebuilt homes. You sit there and you say to yourself, Im not going to say anything, cause Im OK. Then you hear the guy next to you saying, I havent slept for three days. And you all begin to realize, Them, too. What you get out of it is you realize that its OK to feel this way. There was no book on it. Or sometimes I remember those little kids.. We had so much food we didnt know what to do with it, Grossman said. But a year later the questions with no answers continue to gnaw. Its natural. Jeffrey and a friend hopped in their cars and drove toward home. On Aug. 31, 1986, the then sleepy suburban town of Cerritos was faced with unfathomable tragedy when a commercial aircraft collided with a small plane directly over the city. And a reader from Lakewood who really, really, really likes to smoke weed and who was proud way beyond reason to have attended Lakewood High School, responded to a column we wrote about high school in the olden days, which to him were in 1972, when you could buy an ounce of Mexican marijuana for $10, and a little better grade of Mexican for $15, or, you could get the best, Acapulco Gold and Panama Red for $30 an ounce., Mr. Lakewood goes on to say that the 1972 good stuff was WAY better than anything grown today.. Dec. 14, 1988 12 AM PT. Her 8-year-old son, Robbie, who had watched the Aeromexico plane spiral down as he stood in his front yard, overheard her. We spent our whole lives getting here and now an airplane drops from the skies and no place is safe. . [11] Times Staff Writer. Today we talk about what has become known as "The Day the Music Died"On February 3, 1959, rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and "The Big B. My limitation is that I cant tell the difference between your fact and your fiction. Its maybe just once a year. For Lt. John Anderson, commander of a Los Angeles County sheriffs detachment deployed in the neighborhood a few minutes after the crash, there are images that still wont fade. What did Disney actually lose from its Florida battle with DeSantis? Marilyn OHair, a San Diego disaster-intervention counselor who worked closely with survivors of the 1978 PSA crash that killed 144 people in that city, said she believes that extensive and early outreach work done by mental-health counselors in Cerritos will limit long-term effects of the crash. Three people were reported to have been on board the smaller airplane, which crashed in an empty school yard about two blocks from the wreckage of the airliner.. The little kids--4, 5 and 8--were across the street. The smoke-encased neighborhood was cordoned off. At least I know its OK. Audrey said its OK. Thats nice to know. One of the most significant changes was the installation of a new anti-collision instrument in jetliners. Cronkhite and her husband were helping them. The explosion scattered the DC-9's wreckage across Holmes Avenue and onto Carmenita Road, destroying four other houses and damaging seven more. What remains unsettled, and in many cases deeply hidden, are the emotional consequences. There are still so many untold stories that never made it into print, she wrote. I have these blank spots, she said. Let us know. Naturally, we wouldve liked to have spoken with Nelson and her family, and were sorry that we didnt. Privately, he was crushed. There they were finally able to pull each other over the fence to Carmenita and safety. Karl Grundmann, an air traffic controller who was on duty at the Terminal Radar Control Center at Los Angeles International Airport on the Sunday when the collision occurred, said controllers shy away from too much remembering. Last November, Wayne and Sue Nelson, whose Ashworth Place home suffered the heaviest toll of the eight that were damaged but not destroyed, moved back in. Alejandra Molina writes about immigration, race, and religion for the Southern California News Group. They rented another house several blocks away from their old one, but their trips often took them down another part of their old street. On roofs and in flower beds, rescue workers gingerly placed the remains of passengers in bright yellow body bags. Sometimes when I have a customer in front of me I start thinking a little weak--thinking like the customer, not like a finance manager.. A nearby phone rang and Dennis McIllwain lunged to grab it, his face radiant with hope. Within the next five minutes, two more cars driven by strangers passed by. I heard the thrust reversals, the pilot instinctively trying to slow the plane. Heres an account of the crash and its aftermath from The Times archives: An Aeromexico DC-9 had left Loreto, Mexico, early in the morning of Aug. 31, 1986, carrying 64 passengers. He is the author of four books, most recently a memoir/collection I'm Dyin' Here. Its a fitting place for the memorial. The sculpture bears the names of all of the victims. The three Kramers were killed instantly. The community is invited to attend the Cerritos Air Disaster 25thAnniversary Remembrance at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, August 31. I used to say, Thats the way its going to be. Im not the same. Perhaps she had miraculously escaped. Jeffrey McIllwain wrote five letters to the little girl in the hospital. I talked to a woman who lived in Germany during the war. On August 31, 1986, an Aeromexico DC-9 was clipped by a small plane over Cerritos. Its an event. After the National Transportation and Safety Board inspected the scene, the city began the long journey of bringing the neighborhood back to normal, clearing out the dirt and debris, fencing off the area and eventually rebuilding homes. A black path runs through the Cerritos, Calif., neighborhood in this August 31, 1986 file photo, after a midair collision between an AeroMexico DC-9 and a small twin-engine plane. No one knew. The couples other daughter, Rochelle, then 15, worried when her mother didnt pick her up from her aunts house as she had promised. Until the accident, it was something she never did. He saw Theresa Estrada, who had just come back from the grocery store when she saw the plane hit her house, killing her husband, Frank; her 16-year-old son, Javier; and her 14-year-old daughter, Anjelica. . It happened to be Labor Day weekend in 1986. But for the people who were closest to the crash, by geography or family, life has been robbed of much of its balance. His mother, Linda, 14 others in their houses, and 67 people aboard the two planes were killed that sunny Sunday. What if Id been outside, washing my car, instead of inside, in the back bedroom, watching a tennis match? Ivan Medina asks himself again and again. He tried to tell her what had helped him: Always remember your parents love for you and rely on the love of your family. In California during the last year there have been eight midair collisions, killing seven and injuring three. Weve been spread out so long, itll be kind of like a reunion, said Doug Fuller, an engineer who moved in four years ago. A month later, Sue Nelson was talking about a cruise the family would take in several years. The memorial for those who died at 11:52 a.m. on Sunday, Aug. 31, 1986, when two planes collided in the skies over Cerritos and plunged to the ground, at the 25 year memorial Wednesday, at the Cerritos Sculpture Garden in Cerritos. God has showered us with love.. Nevertheless, Kramers plane collided with the jetliner just before noon, clipping off its horizontal tail stabilizer, turning the DC-9 into a rudderless missile. I have to pinch myself to get out of it. . Long after the funerals and the insurance payoffs and the title transfers and the first Christmases have been endured, a feeling of incompleteness still plagues the survivors. Instead, the most important piece came in reaction to our story on Wednesday on the 30th anniversary of the Cerritos Air Disaster. Some residents were in church, some were shopping for groceries for backyard barbecues. . He stored negatives of photos in a fireproof safe. The survivors, particularly the ones who were in the neighborhood when the plane hit, need to share their feelings, but so few people can grasp the magnitude of what they saw. At his house, all that remained was the garage. Maybe Billings is right. Its on a daily basis--I cant pick up the phone and talk to her, he said. Nothing can replace not being able to hold them every day., Theresa Estrada knows that, back in Cerritos, the talk among some neighbors is that her life is shattered and that shes having a tough time of it. Los Angeles. What now? For years after the crash, Cerritos was known almost exclusively for the disaster. There were body parts, a very, very horrific scene.