The Source for Navy News

Looking back at the 'Good Friday Miracle'
Story Number: NNS130405-09
4/5/2013

By MC2 Antonio P. Turretto Ramos, Naval Air Station Oceana Public Affairs

Virginia Beach, Va. (NNS) -- The smell of combusting JP-5 jet fuel and the loud hum of twin F404-GE-402 enhanced performance turbofan engines waft in the air in Virginia Beach, as machines relied upon for both sword and shield taxi down the runway at NAS Oceana.

A 40,000 pound U.S. Navy F/A-18 D Hornet, assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 106, traveling 175 miles per hour, becomes airborne April 6, 2012. All within seconds, the student pilot demonstrates his extensive
aviator training is second nature. He determines he is indeed airborne and proceeds to lift the landing gear, adjust flaps and go into full afterburner, accelerating to 287 miles per hour. Not a soul knows that in a matter of minutes, this $29 million machine will become the subject of what will become known as a "Good Friday Miracle."

Ken Snyder, Navy Region Mid-Atlantic & Emergency Services district fire chief, was returning from his lunch hour around 12 p.m. when his radio cracks, revealing a chilling initial report from emergency dispatch requiring him to respond to a military aircraft that has crashed into the ocean. Immediately, Snyder turns his truck around and heads to the Virginia
Beach oceanfront toward the emergency, but in route dispatch reports that the aircraft has actually crashed into an apartment complex. A shot of adrenaline and hundreds of critical complex decisions immediately race
through Snyder's mind, as the red lights and siren of his emergency response vehicle flash and whine as he travels against traffic to the scene.

According to Snyder, when responding to emergencies, he often sizes up the situation to better prepare himself mentally for the enormous undertaking. During that thought process, Snyder says he begins to assess the many factors of life safety, property conservation, getting there safely, access to the scene, logistics, securing the scene and managing resources, so as
never to leave any installation in his charge vulnerable. On April 6, Snyder had to take into account the specific hazards and challenges unique to this
emergency and combine them to determine what action he would take.

"As confident as you are that everything is trained, you can't help but think, what did I forget and what am I missing? I kept doing that and I couldn't think of anything, and that made me even more nervous," said
Snyder. "When I arrived on scene, the Beach [Virginia Beach Fire Department] was already there and actively involved in fighting the fire. Half the complex was well involved in fire."

Snyder's role in the response as the Navy liaison to the Virginia Beach Fire Department was to provide Navy resources to include ambulances, personnel and "crash trucks" equipped with fire-fighting foam to help subdue the flames, fed by more than 12,000 pounds of jet fuel, that devastated the structure.

According to Lt. Kristopher McAbee, instructor pilot at VFA-106, an aviator only has three to four seconds to assess and react to a mechanical failure similar to the series of mechanical malfunctions that brought this F/A-18D to the ground.

"We have a litany of memorized emergency procedures for tons of different things that we can spit out at any time," said McAbee. "A few things that should run through any pilot's head during this type of emergency is if they can save the aircraft, where am I, am I over a populated area, what's my air speed, and do I have enough thrust to keep the plane in the air?"

McAbee said that a pilot must think fast but no fast hands are allowed in the cockpit because that's how mistakes happen. McAbee also noted that in this case the pilot had only had an approximate two or three second window to make those split second interpretations and adjustments to minimize collateral damage and "punch out" or eject.

Lt. Barry Gentry, Navy Region Mid-Atlantic firefighter, emergency medical technician and member of a search and rescue team, searched for remaining pockets of fire and residents of the apartment complex who were still unaccounted for after the larger fire was extinguished,.

"Seeing the jets take off during the day, the power they display, what they can do and then seeing them at night with the flames coming out the back, they're awesome to say the least," said Gentry. "When I got there, to see that aircraft the way it was. what stuck with me the most was the emptiness of seeing the aircraft there, what was left, the two engines, and how
helpless it was. This awesome aircraft that's so powerful, then looking at it at its weakest moment gave me this feeling of emptiness."

Snyder and Gentry both attribute training recently conducted before the crash that focused on meshing local and federal emergency responders to create one unified effort in disaster situations for the successful response. Only the month before, NAS Oceana had finished training about 400 Virginia Beach firefighters on airport familiarization, traffic patterns of aircraft, aircraft rescue and firefighter communications, aircraft familiarization and specific hazards when dealing with civilian and military aircraft.

Capt. Bob Geis, commanding officer of NAS Oceana, had been in command for only three and half weeks before the crash, but had been the executive officer for 18 months prior, and one of the executive officer's functions is to make sure personnel are trained and prepared for eventualities.

"We spent a significant amount of time training and preparing for eventualities. This was one of those things you train for and hope never happens, but it happened," said Geis.

Although not present at NAS Oceana when the mishap initially occurred, proper planning and insight led to a great emergency response, said Geis. "I had the unique perspective to witness what a fantastic job the team did without me pulling the levers, the team that we spent so much time building, a team we allowed to train above and beyond what the straight requirements
were, a team we encouraged to go out in town and reach out to our civilian counter parts. There was an immense sense of pride," said Geis.

Both air crew safely ejected from the aircraft and were treated at a local hospital and all residents of the destroyed apartment complex were eventually accounted for.

However, Snyder said he can't explain why there weren't any casualties in the incident. He found himself in Geis' office with firefighting gear still donned, covered in soot and ash after being relieved for the evening.

"When I was relieved at 8 p.m., we were still looking for five people," reflected Snyder. "I was the only one who had been at the scene at that time. Everybody just got real quiet and Capt. Geis leaned over his desk and
said 'Well Ken? How was it?' and I said, 'Well sir, all I can tell you is I've been to the Playdough fun factory of death and I cannot explain why we
haven't been putting people in body bags all day.'"

"I was just so frightened that there was fatalities on the ground, and then to find out later that there was none! It just amazed me that everybody in that apartment complex, at that moment in time, was out doing something. That was a real shock to me," said Gentry.

In the days and weeks to follow, headlines could be read across the country of a "Good Friday Miracle" in that there was no loss of life in the devastating accident. Snyder said that the relationship built by training side-by-side in the months prior to the accident is what really made the difference in the overall response to the incident.

In the year since the mishap, the pilots have continued to fly and trained to fight, the fire departments have continued to work together and develop skills to combat aircraft fires, but Snyder hopes a crash like the one on
April 6, 2012 will never happen again.

Editor's note - This story by MC2 Antonio Turretto Ramos was written Jan. 17, 2013, as part of his application to the Advanced Navy Visual Journalism
program for 2013-2014 at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication in New York. Turretto Ramos will leave NAS Oceana in June to attend the program