Cerritos plane crash left its scars - Press-Telegram

Cerritos plane crash left its scars - Press-Telegram

Cerritos Aero Mexico Crash 1986
I remember this day as if it were yesterday. Skyknight was on day patarol when we got a call to investigate a tall column of black smoke somewhere in Cerritos. We responded from the station in Lakewood. We thought it was a car fire on the freeway. As we got closer we spotted a Hughes500 helicopter over the scene already, which turned out to be Huntington Beach PD's helo. They too would have a tragic day later that afternoon with the annual OP surf festival over their city where riots occurred. We also saw Long Beach PD's ship overhead briefly. When we got directly overhead, it appeared the entire block of the neighborhood was on fire. Like a wall of fire as tall as the pine trees lining the streets. We then saw the airliner's fuselage but only a small portion of it on Carmenita street where it came to a screeching halt. At first I thought where's the rest of the plane? I guess it had come down at a steep enough angle and speed to obliterate itself. THe plane it collided with was in a school yard southeast of there about a quarter mile. It's top half had been decapitated. No survivors. The Sheriff's dept. assigned us the task of air traffic controller in the sky. This was in the days when ENG aircract (Electronic News Gathering) orbited in a stacked column. Nowadays, news media ships park themselves very high over a scene because they can and have wazoo cameras onboard that can zoom in on a persons nose if need be. I counted 31 aircrafted total to keep separated at different altitudes. From law enforcement,ENG,medevac, coroner etc. I did this by keeping track with pencil and paper N numbers, aircraft colors, and altitdue assignment. Everyone was super alert and safe. My partner handled the communications with ground units. We were overhead around 6 hours total. What a sad day.