‘It just fell out of the sky’
Frantic calls fallows the aircraft crash near Savannah.
off from the Savannah airport. Nine airmen from the Puerto Rico Air National Guard perished, but no one else was injured on the ground.
One 911 caller reported something seemed to be wrong with one of the plane’s four engines.
“I saw it take off from the airport and I noticed that one of the propellers wasn’t turning,” the woman told a 911 operator. “And he banked like he was going toward (Interstate) 95, and then all of a sudden he lost altitude and just took a nose dive into the ground.”
The military is investigating. So far, investigators have released no preliminary findings to suggest what caused the crash.
An Air Force spokesman, Maj. Andrew Reed, declined to comment Monday on any details from the 911 calls, citing the active investigation. File, Steve Bisson /
Other witnesses gave similar eyewitness accounts.
“It just literally nosedived into the road,” said one 911 caller.
“He did a barrel roll and went straight into the ground,” said another.
A woman who described black smoke bellowing from the crash tried to get a closer look so she could give emergency dispatchers a better idea of exactly where the plane hit.
“I’m coming up on it,” the woman says. “It’s right off the railroad track. Oh my God, it’s on Highway 21... It’s across both lanes of road.”
“Is it on fire or anything like that?” the operator asks.
“Yes, baby, it’s black smoke,” the caller replies. “The plane like incinerated whenever it hit the concrete.”
Only the tail section of the plane remained intact following the crash. Savannah Morning News via AP
Savannah police released 911 recordings from the crash Monday five days after the C-130 Hercules cargo plane plummeted down onto Ga. Highway 21. It crashed shortly after taking off from the Savannah airport. Nine airmen from the Puerto Rico Air National Guard perished, but no one else was injured on the ground. Authorities said the impact scattered debris over an area roughly 600 feet in diameter.
“I’ve got flames and smoke everywhere and stuff coming out of the sky,” one man told a 911 operator.
The aging plane had long been a part of Puerto Rico’s Air National Guard fleet and had rescued and resupplied U.S. citizens after last year’s hurricanes. It crashed during what was supposed to be its final flight.
The plane was being flown into retirement in Arizona when it took off from Savannah/ Hilton Head International Airport last week. Maj. Paul Dahlen of the Puerto Rico Air National Guard said the aircraft had been manufactured in 1970s, making it roughly 40 years old.
— Several rural Illinois counties have taken a stand for gun rights by co-opting a word that conservatives associate with a liberal policy to skirt the law: sanctuary.
At least five counties recently passed resolutions declaring themselves sanctuary counties for gun owners — a reference to so-called sanctuary cities such as Chicago that don’t cooperate with aspects of federal immigration enforcement.
The resolutions are meant to put the Democratic-controlled Legislature on notice that if it passes a host of gun bills, including new age restrictions for certain weapons, a bump stock ban and size limit for gun magazines, the counties might bar their employees from enforcing the new laws.
“It’s a buzzword, a word that really gets attention. With all these sanctuary cities, we just decided to turn it around to protect our Second Amendment rights,” said David Campbell, vice chairman of the Effingham County Board. He said at least 20 Illinois counties and local officials in Oregon and Washington have asked for copies of Effingham County’s resolution.
County officials fear their state legislators won’t be able to stop the passage of the gun restrictions because they are outnumbered by lawmakers from in and around Chicago, where the vast majority of the more than 650 homicides last year involved guns.
Co-opting the sanctuary title is also a way of drawing attention to the rural-urban political divide that was so stark in the last general election, when “downstate” areas of Illinois backed Donald Trump, who remains popular with those voters, while the Chicago backed Hillary Clinton, who grew up in the suburbs.
“We’re just stealing the language that sanctuary cities use,” explained the Effingham County’s top prosecutor, Bryan Kibler, who came up with the idea.
Not lost on them is that lawmakers from Chicago were instrumental in turning Illinois into what they derisively call a “sanctuary state” by passing recent legislation that prohibits local law enforcement from arresting or detaining people based solely on their immigration status. Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner signed it into law.
“They are trying to make a point that they really resent how the city of Chicago treats the rest of the state and how they’re treated as gun owners,” said Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association.
The resolutions are largely symbolic — a way for communities where guns are cherished and where hunting is a way of life to make the point that they view most restrictions on guns to be unconstitutional.
“We wanted to ... get across that our Second Amendment rights are slowly being stripped away,” Kibler said.
Dave Workman, of the Bellevue, Wash.-based Second Amendment Foundation, sees something more.
“It’s like a warning shot across somebody’s bow,” said Workman, who knows of one other place, Oregon’s Deschutes County, that is looking at doing something similar to the Illinois counties. “If you’ve got four or five counties telling Chicago something, that’s significant.”