Resident: It wasn’t a normal plane sound
It was like any other Tuesday for Kim Saba as she unloaded groceries outside her condo in Methuen — until the alarming sound of a struggling airplane engine caught her attention and she watched it lose control and slam into the roof of a nearby building.
Saba, a 52-year-old who has lived in the Prides Crossing condo complex for 15 years, said she started screaming to warn people of the crash. Here is her story as told to Herald reporter Brian Dowling:
“I was emptying out my groceries from my car. What caught my attention was I heard a funny sound from the plane. It wasn’t a normal plane sound. I looked up and I said, ‘Holy (expletive).’ It was too low, and I thought he was going to hit in the corner where I was. He was at the tree line by the time I saw him.
I said, ‘He’s not going to make it,’ so I started screaming, because it’s only elderly in the building by me. What happened was when he came, he turned. I know he was trying hard. I think he was trying to get in the pond or he was trying to get over the rooftop without hitting the building.
It was a hard sound on the motor. I can’t describe it. I hear a million planes come in, but this was not the same sounds as a regular plane. Now that I think about it, I don’t think I saw the propeller moving. When he took the turn, he just went into the building. It was so quiet, (then) the bang. It was so quiet. It just went boom, then no flames. I saw smoke.
I screamed to get people’s attention, then I went and rang every doorbell I could find. There were a couple of people coming out in shock, people saying ‘What happened?’
This was going to happen. I had a feeling. The planes, they come in too low. They are supposed to be 100 feet above the buildings. I call into the airport sometimes, and I tell them, ‘That guy who just came in was too low.’ They say ‘No, they are 100 feet over the thing.’ They need to change the runway, and it would make more sense, over the river. It’s all open land over there. It’s the waste station and the incinerator.
I just cried. I called the police department. I work at the police department as a dispatcher. I couldn’t think of the number. I go, ‘Oh my God!’ I was shaking so much. I overreacted because I was so scared. They said, ‘Kim, you are usually the one who is calm and collected. You should hear your take. ‘Hurry up! Get someone!’ They said, ‘You were not calm.’
The people who lost their apartment; the guy said I woke up in the house in the morning, in that room. That was his bedroom, him and his wife. That’s terrible. I said to him, ‘Thank God, because you know what? It could be worse. They will fix that.’