Plane damaged back of home

Sunday, December 12, 1999

By PAUL ROGERS
Staff Writer

HASBROUCK HEIGHTS -- Eric Deitchman spent Saturday morning picking through the charred debris in his back yard and wincing at the damage to his home.

A corner of the family room had been shorn off, and was sealed with heavy plastic. Strips of vinyl siding had melted. Bits of aircraft and pages from a pilot's safety manual, their edges singed by flames, were strewn on the ground.

"It's pretty bad -- but for as bad as it is, it could have been a lot worse," said Deitchman, pausing before repeating himself. "It could have been a lot worse."

It was in his small back yard off Central Avenue that a twin-engine plan plummeted to a fiery and fatal crash Thursday evening after apparently barreling into a corner of the house. All three passengers were killed and the pilot died soon afterward of his injuries.

The plane was headed for Teterboro Airport, two miles to the east. Investigators say the crash occurred after the pilot, Paul A. Pederson Jr., whose license was suspended for 45 days last year as the result of an earlier accident, ignored commands by an air traffic controller that he stay on course.

On a normal Thursday evening in December -- the accident occurred about 5:30 p.m. -- Deitchman, a 40-year-old software consultant, would have been driving home from work. He said his wife, Judy, and their two children, ages 12 and 10, almost certainly would have been at home. His daughter, Ashley, said they probably would have been watching television in the family room, a rear addition to the home.

But instead, Eric and Judy Deitchman had left early that morning for Palm Springs, Calif., where his company was holding its annual holiday vacation. Their children, Ashley and Todd, were staying with their grandparents down the street.

Of all the houses in the dense suburban neighborhood that could have been struck by the plane, Deitchman said he considered it nothing short of a miracle that it was theirs that was hit -- at a time when no one was home.

"The Lord works in mysterious ways," he said. "This was the only house that was unoccupied."

He and his wife learned about the crash a few hours after it happened, when they had settled into their hotel in Palm Springs and decided to give their son and daughter a call.

"I was stunned," Deitchman said Saturday. "I couldn't believe it."

The couple took the first flight home they could find, leaving at 4:30 the next morning and arriving Friday evening. Based on their family's descriptions of the crash -- a shuddering explosion, followed by shooting flames and billows of white smoke against the evening sky -- they expected the damage to be worse.

Most of their gray, two-story house remains intact, and the family is still able to live in it. However, the family room and all of the furniture in it were destroyed in the crash.

The only items in the room that were spared were a small Christmas tree and a menorah, said Sadie Manganello, Judy Deitchman's mother.

As he looked over the damage to the rear of the house, Deitchman said the crash still seemed somewhat unreal, since he and his wife had been spared the trauma of witnessing the horror, including the attempted rescue of the plane's 37-year-old pilot, whose body was on fire. He died in a hospital later that night.

Judy Deitchman was more private Saturday in her reaction to the accident. "I just feel really bad for the people who perished," she said. "There's nothing else to say."

As the investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board pressed on, residents and lawmakers in Bergen County continued to call for a reduction of flights to and from Teterboro Airport and a change in the flight paths of planes taking off and landing there. Outrage over aircraft noise and pollution, and the risk of accidents near Teterboro, has bubbled over for years in the densely populated towns surrounding the airport.

Rep. Marge S. Roukema, R-Ridgewood, said Saturday that she would renew an effort to persuade the Federal Aviation Administration to consider establishing alternative routing, particularly over the Atlantic Ocean, for planes coming to and from Teterboro and other airports across the region.

"As everything builds up and the air traffic increases, we have to look for alternatives," Roukema said.

Copyright © 1999 Bergen Record Corp.