Before he crashed, the pilot of a small plane indicated he was running low on fuel, according to federal officials who cautioned they have not yet determined a cause for the accident that killed the pilot and an elderly couple.
The twin-engine Piper Navajo was approaching Chicago Executive Airport just before 11 p.m. Monday when the pilot made a "low fuel announcement," according to Ed Malinowski, an air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board.
About five miles from the airport, the plane ripped through a stand of trees near Portwine and Orange Brace roads and came to rest between two houses near Riverwoods. Police and fire officials reported a small fire that they put out with a hand-held extinguisher.
No fuel was found in or around the plane's gas tanks, which were "compromised" in the wreckage, Malinowski said. But he cautioned that doesn't mean there wasn't any fuel in the tanks.
Malinowski said the official cause of the crash will remain under investigation for months.
The plane, with two pilots and a flight paramedic aboard, had picked up an elderly couple from West Palm Beach Monday evening and had refueled in Jessup, Ga. The husband, 80-year-old John W. Bialek, was suffering from a blood infection and wanted to be with his children and grandchildren in the Chicago area, his family said.
Bialek and his 75-year-old wife Ilomae were killed in the crash, along with one of the pilots, William Didier, 58.
Charlie Norwesh was watching TV in his living room in the heavily wooded neighborhood of upscale homes when he heard a loud "vibrating sound." His wife, Kim, in the kitchen heard a "whoosh."
They saw a light out the window and ran across the street to investigate. She called 911.
"It was the most horrible thing I've ever seen," he said. "It, to me, looked like a movie set. It didn't look real. It was that horrible."
As flames shot up from the fuselage, Charlie Norwesh looked into the crumpled wreckage and saw two bodies motionless in the back of the plane. The pilot was unresponsive, but the young man in the passenger seat was screaming that his leg was broken, and he was bleeding from a broad gash across his forehead, Norwesh said.
Norwesh dragged the man through a hole in the fuselage and moved him away from the wreck. Kim Norwesh said she tried to keep him talking.
Charlie Norwesh said he used a fire extinguisher from his house to fight flames and tried to put out the fire with his coat. But it started melting and he tried to pull off the cover of one of the plane's seats to smother the fire, but that started melting as well, he said, showing the blisters that bubbled on his fingertips.
Eventually, a man who identified himself as the plane's medic came from behind Norwesh, he said. Norwesh was unsure how the man ended up outside the plane, but the victim's arm was badly injured.
Norwesh, who owns a Chicago construction company, remained badly shaken Tuesday. "I tried to go to work, but it was hard to focus," he said.
The Bialeks had arranged for the flight because they wanted to be closer to their family, including their two grandchildren who are 7 and 10. “We were moving [them] up here from Florida for family support,” said their son, John B. Bialek.
Before moving to Florida, John and Ilomae Bialek lived at the end of a cul de sac in Streamwood. Their daughter continued to live in the brick ranch home after they left. Neighbors said the couple had kept to themselves.
“The man didn’t talk much, [she] was very nice, very congenial,” said Ken Knox.
Sanjay Raut, who has lived in the neighborhood for 19 years, said they were a “great couple” but he only knew them from occasionally seeing them in the neighborhood.
“It’s very sad to know some neighbor died, it’s not a good thing to hear. God rest their souls, that’s all I can say,” Raut said.
The plane was owned by Trans North Aviation and had passed a safety inspection earlier that day, according to the company. The pilot had filed an instrument flight plan, meaning the plane was being tracked on radar and the pilot was in constant contact with controllers as it flew toward Chicago, according to Elizabeth Cory, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Chicago.
The plane cruised at an altitude of 10,000 feet on the flight north, Malinowski said. It was moving southeast when it crashed, he said.
The plane hit the ground within 50 or 60 feet of a home. One of the owners said she and her husband felt their house shake as the aircraft flew overhead. Next she heard an indescribable noise that she later found out was the sound of trees being ripped apart by the plummeting aircraft.
"It was like you could hear destruction," the woman, who asked that her name be withheld, told the Tribune this morning.
Before she said she knew what happened, the homeowner said dozens of emergency vehicles descended on her normally quiet block.
"It's just unreal (having) a half-mile of emergency vehicles outside, it's mind-boggling. I feel sorry for the people (inside the plane)."
Ron Schaberg, owner and president of Trans North Aviation, expressed grief over the fatal crash -- the first at his company which airlifts patients to hospitals in more than 30 years, he said.
"I'm just very sorry," he said, his voice breaking. Schaberg said he planned to catch an early morning flight to Chicago.
The deadly crash was the second to occur in the Chicago area since Saturday.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com
