PLANES COLLIDE IN L. A.; 72 DEAD.

Cerritos, Calif. -- An AeroMexico DC-9 jetliner and a single-engine plane collided in flight Sunday and hurled into a suburban Los Angeles neighborhood, killing all 67 people aboard the planes and at least five people on the ground.
A wall of flame and burning debris howled through the upper-middle class subdivision 20 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. The planes crashed just 8 miles from Disneyland and 3 miles from the Knott's Berry Farm amusement park.
One resident burned to death trying to save his $170,000 house with a garden hose.
In addition, police said, there was a possibility that a family of seven had also perished in another home, but it was unconfirmed.
Authorities said the planes were between 6,000 and 7,000 feet high when they collided. The Federal Aviation Administration would not comment on how they came to be in the same airspace, but one airport official said he understood the small plane "had every right to be there."
Part of the fuselage of AeroMexico Flight 498 came to rest on Carmenita Avenue after hurtling through a concrete retaining wall. It was the only recognizable piece of the DC-9 to be seen. Parts of bodies littered the manicured lawns and emergency workers rushed about covering them with yellow plastic bags.
"We know there were people in those homes and there could not be anybody alive in any of them," said Los Angeles County Fire Department Battalion Chief GORDON PEARSON. He said at least five residents were killed and nine injured.
An AeroMexico official said there were 58 passengers and six crew members aboard Flight 498 from Mexico City. "We are not aware of any survivors," Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy DREW BASEY said.
The airliner destroyed at least 10 houses and damaged 20 more. The Piper Tomahawk, with three people in it, fluttered to earth in a nearby schoolyard. A woman's legs protruded from a window.
"My neighbors are dead! My neighbors are dead!" screamed a hysterical woman roaming through the grisly wreckage. "My cat is dead! The planes, my God, they disintegrated. Look at the torso over there. Oh my God."
More than 200 law enforcement and emergency agencies from Los Angeles and Orange counties were dispatched to the disaster. More than 50 federal investigators were ordered to the scene and AeroMexico was sending an investigation team.
JOHN RICH, an investigator with the National Air Safety Board, said controllers at El Toro Marine Station handled the AeroMexico flight before handing it over to FAA controllers at Los Angeles International Airport three minutes before the crash.
RICH said investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were en route to a command post near the crash to examine tapes and transcipts of communication between the AeroMexico pilots and controllers.
"We still have tapes and transceipts coming to us of air-to-ground communications," RICH said. "Until the transcripts arrive, we have no way of knowing exactly what was said."
RICH said investigators do not yet know if the Piper was communicating with any controllers at the time of the accident. He said the plane departed Torrance Airport at 11 a.m. en route to Big Bear, Calif.
"The jetliner was on its back and dropping like a rock," said TOM TAIT, editor of the Orange Coast Daily Pilot of Costa Mesa, who was driving on the Riverside Freeway in Buena Park when he saw the airliner falling two miles away.
"It was just going straight down, no power at all," he said.
SUGATA BANERJEE, who saw the crash from his back yard a block away, said he ran down the street and saw flames ignite a man clothes while he tried to wet his house with a garden hose. "He burned to death," he said. A woman in the area also said she saw the man die.
"The whole corner of the neighborhood has been destroyed," airborne reporter BOB TUR said on radio station KFWB. "This neighborhood has just been devastated, just flattened."
AeroMexico is owned by the Mexican government, and Sunday's crash was the second involving a national airline in five months.
On March 31, a Mexicana airlines Boeing 727 jet bound for Los Angeles, crashed into a mountain 59 miles northwest of Mexico City, killing all 167 people aboard. Nine Americans were among the dead in Mexico's worst aviation disaster.
In Santa Barbara, where President Reagan is vacationing at his ranch, spokesman Peter Roussel issued a statement.
"The President and Mrs. Reagan are deeply saddened by this tragedy," the statement said. "Their thoughts and prayers are with all the families involved."
It was the worst air disaster in Los Angeles International Airport history.

Daily Herald Chicago Illinois 1986-09-01

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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!