Saturday, December 11, 1999
By SEAMUS McGRAW
and KENNETH LOVETT
Staff Writers
HASBROUCK HEIGHTS -- The middle-aged woman with the fuzzy
slippers stood on the front stoop of her Washington Place home early Friday, scowling at
the sky.
Overhead, a pair of news helicopters hovered noisily only
a few hundred feet above the spot where a twin-engine Beech Baron plane had plunged to
earth in flames the evening before.
The woman, who has lived for years less than a mile from
Teterboro Airport, said she wasn't frightened by the crash that killed four people, nor
was she worried that another plane, bound into or out of the busy airport, would crash
into her densely populated neighborhood.
But she was irritated by the racket of the choppers
overhead.
"That noise bothers me," she said. "That's
the only air-traffic worry I have."
A day after the small plane had crashed at the foot of two
trees in a 50-by-50-foot patch of back yards, narrowly missing two houses, many of those
interviewed in the neighborhood Friday said the crash, although tragic, had not made them
feel any less secure or any more frightened about living so close to an airport.
Take Marta Peters, who has lived for 50 years on
Washington Place. As long as she can remember, the hum of aircraft has reverberated from
above -- but over the years, it has become just background noise, something she doesn't
even think about.
Thursday's crash, she said, "was just something very
out of the ordinary," a situation unlikely to repeat itself.
Around the corner, Pete Visconti, of Terrace Avenue, was
thinking the same thing as he took his daily early-morning walk.
"A plane could come down anywhere," he said.
"I could be walking and get hit by a car. You can't control those things."
Sidney Parker, who lives across Central Avenue from the
spot where the plane came down, also was philosophical.
"When your time is up, your time is up," he
said.
Not everyone, of course, was as sanguine.
"I was always afraid something like this would
happen," said Claire Happe, of 34 Central Ave., just a few houses from the crash
site. "Those planes fly too low -- much too low."
And in nearby Hackensack, Lori Lei, of Summit Avenue, said
a citizens group has in recent months collected 400 signatures calling upon the Federal
Aviation Administration and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to change air
routes and make other changes at Teterboro Airport.
The Port Authority owns Teterboro; the FAA regulates air
traffic.
A local hearing was held recently by the FAA, but no
promises were given, Lei said.
Lei also blamed Governor Whitman, who appoints members to
the Port Authority, for not pushing for changes, and said many of the private jets using
Teterboro fly over the most heavily populated section of Hackensack.
"I'm so annoyed this happened," Lei said of the
crash. "Accidents can happen, but they've been hearing about this for years and
nobody has done anything. I hate to say that maybe this had to happen for people to start
listening."
Hasbrouck Heights Mayor William Torre said he and other
municipal officials met with FAA representatives two weeks ago to request that air traffic
into Teterboro be rerouted to avoid passing over his town. The borough recently sent the
agency a letter to that effect, Torre said.
"We live with this every day," he said.
Gilbert Bowman, for one, plans to keep living with it.
If anyone has a right to be frightened, it's Bowman and
his family. His back yard was littered Friday with the remains of the crashed plane. There
were scorch marks on the two towering oak trees in his back yard. The plane had crashed
into those trees, narrowly missing his house. But as he hustled through the police tape
with his young son early Friday, Bowman said he has no real fear an accident like that
will ever repeat itself, and he also said he has no plans to move.
"I'm not going to get rid of those trees,
either," he said.
Copyright © 1999 Bergen Record Corp.
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