County fire officials investigate JWA accident

Deepa Bharath

The Orange County Fire Authority is looking into what caused a May 20

accident at the airport when one of its fire trucks rolled back and

hit an American Airlines plane, officials said.

Firefighters were responding to a medical emergency at the

terminal when the truck’s brakes failed and it slid back and hit the

aircraft, airport spokeswoman Ann McCarley said. No one was hurt in

the incident.

But the crash left a 3-by-4-foot dent near the right wing of the

plane, American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner said.

“The most important thing for us was no one got hurt,” he said.

“We do come across vehicle-airplane incidents. But they are

infrequent.”

Fire Authority Chief Scott Brown said that the incident was “an

isolated event.”

“We consider it a freak accident,” he said. “But we’re in the

midst of doing an internal review to find out if it was a mechanical

problem or a human error that caused the accident.”

Brown said it was the first time any of the fire department’s

vehicles have been involved in an accident of this nature.

“We have stringent procedures and safety checks,” he said. “We’re

looking at how we can prevent something like this from ever happening

in the future.”

The National Transportation Safety Board is also investigating the

incident.

“It’s pretty routine for us to investigate an incident like this

one given the extent of damage,” Air Safety Investigator Howard

Plagens said.

He said this is the first time he has heard of an accident on the

tarmac involving a fire truck.

“But aircrafts do get hit all the time by other kind of vehicles,”

Plagens said.

The 97 passengers and six crew members aboard the Boeing 757

aircraft were never in any danger at the time. They boarded another

plane to New York City’s John F. Kennedy Airport.

McCarley said the airport has had only two accidents on the tarmac

over the last three years.

“Both of those were minor incidents,” she said. “And no one was

hurt.”