It’s just two days before Christmas in 1985, and a thick cloud of fog rolls down over the Californian
city of Concord in Contra Costa County. Through the mist and darkness, two flashing red lights
are seen in the sky. A plane appears, descending toward the Buchanan Field Airport's runway on the
city's western outskirts. Weather conditions are far from ideal for flying, but behind the controls
of the twin-engine Beechcraft 95-A55 Baron aircraft is an experienced pilot. World War II
veteran Jim Graham has flown in the Navy and has spent almost half a century inside the cockpit.
The thick fog, however, makes the landing difficult, even for an experienced pilot. In
the first attempt to land, he misses the approach and flies by the control tower. These situations
are more likely to happen when visibility is low, as it is today. Graham ascends his aircraft
for another approach and disappears into the clouds. Suddenly, the plane reappears in a steep,
descending right turn. It comes down straight toward the nearby mall like a kamikaze plane.
A loud explosion shakes the neighborhood, followed by a ball of fire rising 40 feet into the air.
The plane crashes into the skylight of the Sun Valley Mall and creates havoc inside.
Christmas now turned into a tragedy. A festive atmosphere buzzes inside the
Sun Valley Mall just moments before. Christmas is just two days away,
and the mall is crowded with last-minute holiday shoppers and kids who have come to see Santa. It’s
half past eight in the evening, and thousands of people are inside. Blissful and merry,
they are unaware that tragedy looming over them. At 8:35 p.m., out of nowhere, a thundering
crash shakes the mall. A plane hits the skylight near the Macy’s Department Store,
tearing a 50-foot-long {15m} hole in a devastating explosion. The skylight burts into thousands
of pieces of glass and metal that rain on the people inside. The plane wreckage sweeps across
the mall’s atrium down to the bottom floor while the flaming droplets of plane fuel set ablaze the
entire place. Upon crashing down, the aircraft breaks the pipes of the fire sprinkler system
and disables it. Water gushes out of the pipes but does not affect the spreading blaze.
Then, the power goes out. In In a matter of seconds,
the festive atmosphere turns into chaos. People are running everywhere, caught by panic and the
shower of burning fuel and debris. Many scream in agony with bruned skin hanging off their bodies.
- Interview - Kim Aguirre and her three-year-old kid Molina were
in line to see Santa when the plane hit the mall. Fragments of the skylight fell on her as she tried
to protect her child. She felt her body burning as she grabbed her son, wrapped him in her coat,
and ran towards the exit. Somehow, she managed to find a side door that led them to safety.
It was sheer luck that the two of them survived. Next to her in line was another mom, Anh On,
and her 14-month-old son Alexander, who were both buried by roof debris. On survived the crash,
but her son didn’t. Unfortunately, he was not the only one who lost his life that day.
Victims were everywhere. Before the ambulance arrived, other shoppers and store employees
acted as first responders. Using clothes from the stores, they made improvised stretchers
to carry the victims and put them inside the decorative central fountain to ease their pain.
Sears employees used all the ice from their refrigerators to help.
The christmas-themed area went into a ball of flame almost instantly upon the impact:
- Interview - The help was quick to come, though. When they
arrived, neither the firefighters nor the medics knew what happened since the sprinkler system
initiated the alarm. Shoppers who witnessed the tragedy provided them with misinformation claiming
a terrorist attack or earthquake happened. Regardless, what was clear was that the disaster’s
massive scale. Almost every ambulance in the county was called to the scene.
The injuries ranged from cuts and bruises to smoke inhalation and severe burns. The
injured were transferred to ten different hospitals, with the critically injured
taken to the Alta Bates Burn Center in Berkeley. The final toll was 77 injured and seven people
dead. James Graham, the pilot of the plane that crashed, and two passengers died on the spot. The
day after the crash, 22-year-old Pam Stanford, who came to the mall to pick up a wedding ring,
died of her injuries. She had suffered burns to over 80 percent of her body and was on life
support. In the weeks that followed, three other shoppers succumbed to their wounds, of whom the
youngest was the 14-month-old Alexander On. Survivors went through a difficult recovery
period that, for some victims, included dozens of operations. In addition to having their
faces and bodies disfigured, they also suffered psychological trauma as a result of the disaster.
It was a horrendous tragedy that no one could explain.
On December 24, Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation
Safety Board (NTSB) investigators arrived at the scene to determine the cause of the accident.
Parts of the plane were removed and taken for examination, while the two engines were sent to
the manufacturer’s facilities for inspection. A legal action taken by the widow of the
pilot delayed the investigation at first. When examining the engines for potential failures,
the manufacturer had denied her technical representative's participation in the inspection.
While the dispute was ongoing, investigators from the NTSB and the manufacturer, Teledyne
Industries, were banned from tearing down the engines. The district court later rejected the
widow's demands and allowed the inspection of engines to continue. The investigation
ultimately found no mechanical problems with the plane and ruled that the accident was caused by
the pilot’s error and spatial disorientation. If Graham’s error was due to disorientation,
the fog that covered the Buchanan Field Airport that night was undoubtedly behind it.
In such conditions, a pilot could quickly become unaware of his position relative to the ground.
However, James Graham was a skilled pilot with experience in tricky weather conditions.
According to his colleagues, he was composed and not prone to taking risks
or making costly mistakes like this. So, what happened that caused the
experienced pilot to crash his plane straight into a crowded mall?
On the night of the accident - December 23 - he attempted to land by instruments only because
the low visibility made a standard landing procedure impossible. On approaching Concord,
Graham received a clearance approach from the Oakland Air Route Traffic Control Center
and Travis Air Force Base Approach Control. The local Buchanan control was not equipped with radar
and could only provide a landing clearance.. At 8:33 p.m, Graham was cleared to execute
a straight-in landing with his Beechcraft 95-A55 Baron aircraft at runway 19R, one of
two runways at Buchanan, the other being 1L. A straight-in landing is executed using
instruments until the pilot can see the runway. So, they are supposed to descend the aircraft
to an altitude of 340 feet {103m} above mean sea level, 320 feet {98m} above the ground,
and fly at that altitude until they can see the runway guides.
However, if they reach a runway threshold, the so-called “Missed Approach Point,” and overlook
the runway, they must ascend their aircraft and execute the missed approach procedure. This means
the pilot will abort the landing and “go around”. It was exactly what happened that night. At 8:35,
Graham missed the approach and informed the tower he was going to make another attempt to land.
The tower controller instructed him to contact the control at Travis Air Force Base.
According to the NTSB report, only a “garbled” reply was heard and there was
no further radio contact with the aircraft. In a standard re-approach procedure,
the pilot retracted the landing gear on his Baron aircraft and executed a climbing left
turn to 2,500 feet above mean sea level. The plane entered clouds and shortly thereafter
reappeared in a steep descending right turn after which it crashed into the mall.
Why exactly Graham made the sharp turn that caused the devastating tragedy remains unknown.
There was a suspicion that Graham tried to execute an illegal approach to runway 1L
after he missed runway 19R, in which case he had to make a right turn,
but the controller was recorded giving Graham the instructions to contact Travis Control
per the missed approach procedure. Also, if Graham wanted to make an illegal approach to runway 1L,
he wouldn’t have retracted his landing gear. Controllers at the Buchanan tower had earlier
been accused of instructing the pilots to execute such an illegal circle-to-land landing
instead of executing missed approach procedure which initially backed up the suspicions.
NTSB report concluded pilot error, disorientation and adverse weather
conditions as the probable causes of the tragedy. The Sun Valley Mall Crash infuriated the public.
In the past, there had been calls for the airport to be shut down as it was “out of place” in their
community. When Buchanan Field Airport was built in 1943, it was surrounded by marshes,
fields, and walnut groves. Forty-two years later, the area was filled with housing developments
and shopping centers. By 1985, it was developing into a corporate hub with high-rise
office buildings erected in the streets that bordered the airport and along the flight path.
Fear that similar or even worse accidents might happen was increased by the proposal
to introduce the Pacific Southwest Airlines flights with large commercial airliners coming
from Los Angeles International Airport. In the winter months, fog lingers for weeks in Concord
and limits the visibility to zero, in which case pilots must fly low using instruments
only to land. In Buchanan Field Airport’s surroundings, this was a dangerous venture.
Many residents believed that the Concord city planner's negligence meant the Sun Valley Mall
crash was an accident waiting to happen. Especially since a year and a half earlier,
another small plane crashed into a car store storage shed on the same street
as Sun Valley Mall. Six people were killed. Nevertheless, despite the residents’ concern,
the airport remained in function but only for non-commercial service. The city's development
continued according to previous plans, with more high-rise buildings built near the airport.
GPS and infrared vision have made airplanes flying into and out of
Buchanan much safer than they were in 1985. The Sun Valley Mall reopened after renovations,
with the stores that were not affected operating the next day.
In the end, city officials were found responsible for the accident, and multiple lawsuits filed by
the survivors, the families of the deceased, and owners of destroyed shops were aimed at them.
According to the complainants, the shopping mall should not have been built so close
to the airport. Over one hundred claimants were compensated with 11.5 million dollars
after many years of trials. This would be the equivalent of about 31 million dollars today.
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people scrambling to escape before the nightclub collapses and kills them all.
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