Fatal plane crash — and the response — deeply divided a small NM town
Three extraordinary young people lost their lives in a plane crash while studying the impact of a Gila forest fire
Ilooked at the crash, and I could see it was on fire, and I knew everyone was dead ... I —I said, ‘There’s nothing I can do.’
I see it every night in every dream, so I don’t know what is my dream, and I don’t know what is reality, because it’s different. Sometimes it’s a fireball, sometimes it’s not.
— Steve Blake, former teacher at Aldo Leopold Charter School in Silver City, in an August 2015 deposition
Two years ago in May, a small plane flying three teenagers over the Gila National Forest for a school-related project crashed and burned a mile from the airport where it should have landed, killing everyone on board.
Ella Kirk, 14: writer of poetry, prose and song. Michael Mahl, 16: musician, devoted Christian, irreverent funnyman and student body president. Ella Myers, 16: photographer, equestrian, budding novelist and aspiring filmmaker. All three were avid conservationists.
And Peter Hochla, 67: a retired Albuquerque psychiatrist and pilot who flew around the state providing mental health care to veterans and inmates in rural areas.
After the tragedy, a lawsuit by the teens’ parents alleged that Hochla lacked experience flying his high-performance aircraft, did not possess a commercial pilot license and did not regularly fly students, and that the Aldo Leopold Charter School didn’t adequately vet him. A family member of Hochla disputed the allegations about his experience and said in a written statement that he “had 4,000 flight hours — more than that of most commercial pilots — and flew nearly daily.”
Last month, the school settled the claims for a total of $750,000 — the maximum payout allowed in lawsuits involving a school under state law. The terms of the settlement with the Hochla estate were not disclosed.
The tragedy — and the response — deeply divided a small town where both the kids and the school were beloved.
Accident reviews by the National Transportation Safety Board and an outside flight expert attributed the crash to a combination of pilot error in handling a “slippery” aircraft that could require delicate maneuvering and the exacerbating factor of weather, particularly wind gusts.
Steve Blake, the teacher who arranged the flight and who, according to depositions in the lawsuit, failed to inform the school administration or review the pilot’s experience, was not formally disciplined until the settlement forced a letter of reprimand. Blake, a co-founder of Aldo Leopold in 2005, resigned from the school last year.
In an email, Blake said he would “not speak publicly about the accident” but said, “Ella, Michael and Ella will always personify the heart, voice and soul of Aldo. They were the most amazing team that I have experienced in 25 years of teaching.”
The settlement required the Aldo Leopold Governing Council and Principal Eric Ahner to acknowledge the administration’s responsibility in the accident and issue a formal apology. The school was also made to hire an outside risk assessor to evaluate decision-making processes and practices in “experiential” education.
An “experiential” education favors field work, and parents say that is part of what sets Aldo Leopold apart. Backpacking trips into the Gila wilder- ness, internships and service projects are all part of the Aldo Leopold program.
On May 23, 2014, Kirk, Mahl and Myers were eager to do research for an ecomonitoring project as part of their participation in the school-mandated Youth Conservation Corps. A forest fire had burned Signal Peak in the Gila just a few weeks before. Blake arranged a flyover of the burn area for the kids to survey the damage.
‘Not a routine flight’
And so I said to Ella, ‘If the weather’s bad, you’re not going to fly, but I want you to call me before you get on the plane. I want you to call me and let me know if you’re flying.’ And then she — she was walking out the door, and she ... kind of had a little huffy thing. And I said, ‘Come back here. You don’t want to leave like that. This could be the last time you ever see me.’
And she got on my lap, and she gave me a great big hug, and she said, ‘Everything’s going to be okay,’ and then she went pedaling off.
AND SHE GOT ON MY LAP, AND SHE GAVE ME A GREAT BIG HUG, AND SHE SAID, ‘EVERYTHING’S GOING TO BE OKAY,’ AND THEN SHE WENT PEDALING OFF.
PATRICE MUTCHNICK,
MOTHER OF ELLA KIRK, IN A DEPOSITION
On Fridays, Hochla often flew to Silver City to see patients. Blake’s wife, Denise, who was a nurse and a colleague of Hochla’s, would pick him up at the airport. Sometimes, when the weather was bad, he would stay the night at the Blake residence.
Hochla was an experienced airman, having served in the New Mexico Air National Guard at Kirtland Air Force Base for 21 years, according to his obituary in this newspaper.
That Friday in May, when the students were looking for a way to survey the damage of the Signal fire, the idea was proposed that Hochla take the kids on a quick flyover of the zone, departing and landing at Whiskey Creek Airport off Highway 180 near town.
The parents signed permission slips with the understanding that, if the weather turned, the flight would be canceled, according to interviews. Storm clouds were skirting the area, and gusty winds picked up in the afternoon. Patrice Mutchnick, mother of Ella Kirk, said in a deposition that she assumed the trip would be called off.
But Hochla’s Beechcraft Model G36 Bonanza departed from Whiskey Creek between 3 and 3:30 p.m. with Kirk, Mahl and Myers on board.
Don Lewis, a commercial airline pilot tasked with reviewing the accident on behalf of the parents, noted in his report that the flight “was not a routine flight” for Hochla, who may have “felt pressure to conclude the mission as promised to the concerned parents and teachers waiting back on the ground.”
Shortly before 4 p.m., according to reports by Lewis and the NTSB, the plane approached the runway too fast. Winds gusting to around 25 knots exceeded the plane’s maximum crosswind limit of 17 knots.
The plane touched down briefly, skipped, then touched down again before Hochla — with too little runway left to stop the aircraft — attempted to take off again, applying full engine power.
But, according to the expert’s report, the airspeed was now too slow to accelerate back to a safe flying speed.
“The pilot made a lastsecond decision to force the airplane into the air to avoid running off of the end of the runway,” Lewis said in his report. “The aircraft struggled to stay airborne in spite of the low speed and high power.”
One wing stalled. The plane began to roll.
Talented trio
Some (people) have a light that radiates from their eyes. A light only death can diminish.
These are the hardest to let go ... You hold them there and try not to move, try to scarcely breathe because you know with only one faint puff their flesh and blood and skin will crumble and dissolve into nothing but dust in the sunlight.
You hold this individual for as long as you can, you hold your breath till you can hold it no longer.
— Ella Myers, in an excerpt from her writings
The parents are trying to honor their children in personal ways.
Brian Myers and Jennifer Douglass, parents of Ella Myers, mounted an exhibit of her photographs and writings that opened at Western New Mexico University in January and will travel the state this year. Myers and Douglass may also set up a foundation that would fund projects that combine art, science and the environment — “because that was the direction Ella was going in her work,” Douglass said.
Myers had written two novels that won national awards, and she had earned a merit scholarship to study filmmaking at a summer program of the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her mother, who runs a horse farm, said she was also an accomplished dressage rider.
“After she died, we found in all of her notebooks the poems and writing that she did,” Douglass said. “She was very private. We respected that. When she did die, finding these things was really something.”
The Mahl family is working to set up a scholarship in Michael Mahl’s name at WNMU.
“He was very outgoing, very sure of himself, definitely a people person,” said Jennifer Mahl, his mother. “He brought joy everywhere he went.”
Mahl played guitar, drums, ukulele, mandolin and an aboriginal wind instrument called the didgeridoo — which he built himself.
“The world lost three extraordinary individuals that day, way too soon,” John Mahl said. “They were making a difference in society.”
Ella Kirk — in addition to her literary and musical pursuits — was actively fighting the state’s plans to divert water from the Gila River. She delivered a 2,500-signature petition to the Interstate Stream Commission and a 6,400-signature petition to Gov. Susana Martinez to keep the Gila running free.
Mutchnick said she is creating a conservation fund in her daughter’s name to pay out small grants for students working on habitat restoration projects or water issues in the Southwest. “Ella used to say, ‘The time is now,’” Mutchnick said. “That’s how I feel about it. I want people to do the work now and do it in memory of her.”
The settlement attempted to end an argument over whether the flight counted as a “school trip.” The administration said that in part because the flight took place three days after the last day of school, it was not sponsored by the school.
In their lawsuit, the parents claimed that regardless of whether class was in session, their kids were doing ecomonitoring that furthered the goals of their Youth Conservation Corps project.
Ahner, the school principal, said in a statement to the Journal that the trip was “school-related because the three students were furthering their studies of how fires affect forest ecology.”
Also, “a faculty member had organized it at the school, and the students met at the school before the flight.”
However, he qualified that statement by adding it was not a “school-sponsored” trip that would have triggered the school’s usual safety protocol.
Ahner said, “Each day we try very hard to do things in our school that honor the lives of the students we lost.”
Mutchnick said, “We did get the apology and for them to initiate some assessments of their program, but we had to go to court to do it.”
John Mahl said his youngest son still attends Aldo Leopold.
“They are taking things seriously,” he said. “I don’t think that would have occurred if it weren’t for the settlement.”