"The fiery crash of a light plane into a jammed shopping mall claimed its fourth fatality Tuesday, while hospital officials put the injury toll at 88.
Three men on the twin-engine Beechcraft Baron died instantly when the aircraft, making its second approach to fog-shrouded Buchanan Field, slammed into the middle of the Sun Valley Mall’s roof shortly after 8:30 p.m. Monday, raining flaming fuel and debris down on panicked shoppers in the gallery two levels below.
Woman Dies of Burns
A young woman who had been shopping at the mall, burned over 80% of her body, died at San Francisco General Hospital Tuesday afternoon. National Transportation Safety Board investigator Don Llorente said at a news briefing late Tuesday that the cause of the crash was not known, but added that one of the aircraft’s two propellers is missing and may provide a clue to what happened.
Three of the mall’s four department stores were reopened Tuesday after engineers told Contra Costa County Fire Chief William Maxfield that the basic structure of the long, narrow building is sound, despite the estimated $3.5-million damage caused when the plane smashed into the roof Monday night.
The Macy’s store, nearest the point where wreckage and flaming fuel spilled down, was closed. A spokesman for the 160-store mall’s management said the heavily damaged central area of the building will take two to five months to repair.
Maxfield suggested that the disaster could have been anticipated.
“An aircraft crashing into Sun Valley Shopping Center two nights before Christmas, all loaded up (with shoppers) like it was--that’s one nightmare we’ve been expecting,” he told a reporter.
Buchanan Field, less than a mile from the big mall and the complex of parking structures, restaurants and other businesses surrounding it, is a county-owned airport which began as a military fighter base during World War II, when there were only scattered farmhouses in the area. The city of Concord, one terminus of the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, grew up around the airport." (
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