Saturday, December 11, 1999

By KENNETH LOVETT
Staff Writer

Ashley Deitchman didn't know whether to be relieved or devastated as she stood in what was left of her family room.

The only thing left standing was a small Christmas tree.

"I don't know what to feel," Ashley, 12, said early Friday, still in shock that a plane had crashed into the back yard of her Central Avenue home in Hasbrouck Heights just 14 hours earlier. "I feel happy, then sad. I'm glad no one was home, but then I get scared."

Ashley was napping on her grandmother's couch when she was awakened about 5:30 Thursday afternoon by a loud explosion. Her parents had left earlier in the day for a vacation in Palm Springs, Calif., and she and her brother, Todd, 10, were staying with their grandmother on Woodside Avenue, just up the road from their house.

"Everyone went outside when they heard the explosion," Ashley said. "All you could see was big, white smoke coming from where my house was."

Ashley's grandmother, Sadie Manganello, ran up the street to see what had happened.

"She saw flames," Ashley said. "She came back and was screaming and she told us. . . . We put our shoes on and ran up there."

Police, however, would not let Ashley or her brother near the house.

They later discovered that a six-seat Beech Baron 58 had crashed into their back yard, killing all four people on board. The Deitchman house was the only one damaged, although a shed and a garage on neighboring properties were also hit by debris from the crash.

"I am more upset right now about those poor people who died," Manganello said. "Those poor people were in the plane screaming for help. A house can be replaced."

Shaken, Ashley and Todd went to a neighbor's house, where they played Nintendo until the news came on. The aerial shots of their neighborhood taken from helicopters flying overhead were frightening.

"It was bad," Ashley said. "It was weird seeing it on TV. It was like, 'Wow, that's my house on TV, and it's burning.' "

Officials believe that before hitting the ground, the plane's wing clipped the family room the Deitchmans had added on to their house a few years ago. One wall of the room collapsed.

What was most frightening to Ashley and her family was that on most nights, they would have been in the family room watching television at the time of the crash.

"They all would have been wiped out," Manganello said.

About8:30 Thursday night, Judy and Eric Deitchman called from California to say they had made it and to check on things at home.

"I said, 'Judy, I don't know how to tell you, but there's bad news here. The house was hit by a small plane,' " Manganello said. "She couldn't believe it. I think I could hear my daughter crying from here."

Friday morning, Ashley and some family members went back to the house to try to find the family's cat, Rusty. From the front, there was little evidence of the disaster that had occurred. Wooden candy canes lined the front lawn, along with a small plastic snowman, hanging poinsettia plants, and a wreath on the door. The only clue from the night before was a singed propane tank sitting near the driveway.

After a short search, Rusty was found, hiding between two boxes in the cellar.

Before leaving, Ashley checked on the rest of the house. It was mostly fine, except for some plates in the dining room that had fallen off the wall and cracked, and food that littered the kitchen after the force of the explosions blew the refrigerator door open.

But it was the family room that stunned Ashley; the television set was smashed, the two couches were ruined, glass was shattered. From the collapsed wall, she could see that a wooden jungle gym outside had been demolished, too.

The only thing not damaged, she said, was a small Christmas tree.

"It didn't move or anything," Todd added.

Judy and Eric Deitchman were heading back to New Jersey on Friday night. It's unclear when they will be able to move back into the house.

Copyright © 1999 Bergen Record Corp.