Fighting Confusion As Well As Fire Emergency Crews Discuss Crash Response

FROM FOR THE RECORD (Tuesday, March 3, 1998): Correction Name incorrect: Lt. Brad Belmont of the Hayden Fire Department organized Sunday’s debriefing for emergency crews involved in a fatal airplane accident. His name was reported incorrectly in a Monday article.

Sheriff’s officers, airport managers, disaster services staff and four fire crews - everybody was responding.

But to what? Only the falling snow was thicker than the blizzard of conflicting information coming in last Thursday around 8 a.m.

“We’ve got a plane down. Then it’s a plane in the lake. Then a plane in the trees,” Kootenai County Sheriff’s Sgt. Al March recalled Sunday. “Then it was a plane in the trees on fire. Then a house on fire.”

March was among more than 30 emergency personnel who gathered Sunday for a debriefing of response to Thursday’s plane crash in the Garwood area. While they might have done a few things differently, all agreed that the confusing and complex situation was handled well.

“You did a very good job,” said Bill Schwartz, the county’s chief of disaster services. “The cooperation and coordination between the agencies was excellent.”

As it turned out, an experimental plane carrying two Spokane men had crashed into a home. Both pilot George Freije and his friend Dean Alan Cox were killed. No one was in the house.

None of that was clear when Lt. Brad Delbert and others from the Hayden Lake Fire Protection District arrived at the rural scene. They found a lakeside house in flames.

“We couldn’t find any parts of a plane. All we had was a fully involved structure,” said Delbert. “We did find part of a wing tip. But the plane could have fallen into the water.”

Meanwhile, managers from the Coeur d’Alene airport were on their way. About 6:50 a.m., a plane from Spokane’s Felts Field had stopped to refuel and then took off again.

“We thought it was kind of weird that anyone would fly in this weather,” said operations manager Phillip Cummings. “We can’t stop anybody from flying. We’re not a controlled airport.”

Five to seven minutes after the plane left, Spokane air controllers called to say that an aircraft had disappeared from radar screens.

Cummings wasn’t surprised there was so little left of the Lancair IV, Frieje’s home-built fiberglass craft.

“When that thing stresses and comes apart, it goes into a million pieces.”

Cummings passed along a compliment given by a Federal Aviation Administration investigator, who said the local emergency response was the best he’d seen.

March and Delbert shared duty as incident commanders. Schwartz took on the task of releasing information.

On Sunday, Delbert said the dispatchers probably had the biggest job as the day began.

Dispatcher Susan O’Brien shared that compliment with Judy Beale, who was dispatching fire and medical crews that day. She explained their frustration at not having more accurate information to pass along to the crews.

Narrow roads made access to the scene difficult. No one knew at first if propane or natural gas was causing the fire to continue to burn, and there was concern about what kind of fumes might endanger people.

The cooperation paid off, though. The fire was put out, the bodies, recovered. No one at the scene was hurt, said Delbert.

Small-town firefighters generally respond to only vehicle fires and medical emergencies, Delbert said. Last week was different.

“We’ve got to plan for the big one,” he said. “The other day, the big one came in.”

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