Glider removed from roof of family’s home
DANBURY — A glider remained lodged in the roof of a Golden Hill Avenue family’s home much of the day Wednesday after nosediving into it Tuesday evening.
Shortly after 7 p.m. Wednesday, Chris Cunningham, the general manager and director of maintenance for New Bedford, Mass.-based Colonial Air, climbed onto the roof and into the attic to secure the glider before crews removed it. He also disconnected the parachute that wasn’t deployed to ensure no further damage.
A crane was brought in and lifted the glider out of the house, swung it around to the yard and dropped it to the ground. Crews were expected to remove the pieces of the glider from Golden Hill Avenue later Wednesday. It was unclear where the pieces were to be taken.
Local fire units appeared to bring wood and plastic to the home, to cover the hole left in the roof by the glider’s impact.
Amanda Wirag Oliveira and her two young children were home when the glider with red and gray stripes crashed through the roof of their two-story house a little before 6 p.m. Tuesday.
The 2016 Alisport Silent 2 Electro — the only one of its kind registered in
Danbury — belongs to Thomas Nejame, owner of Danbury-based swimming pool supply company Nejame & Sons. But the pilot had not yet been identified Wednesday evening, and it was unknown if Nejame was at the controls when the glider lost power.
The pilot took off from Danbury Municipal Airport between 10 a.m. and noon Tuesday. He radioed the tower around 5:45 p.m., but the message was garbled and the connection then lost, said Assistant Airport Administrator Mike Safranek.
The pilot thought he had 20 minutes of power left and was on his final approach to the airport, according to Mayor Mark Boughton — but the battery-operated glider ran out of power.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash, with the assistance of the Federal Aviation Administration, to determine the probable cause of the accident.
FAA officials were on the scene Wednesday afternoon gathering information for the investigation — including interviewing the owners of the house, who are relatives of Oliveira.
An aircraft insurance company is covering the removal of the aircraft, Safranek said.
Oliveira was on the second floor and her two young daughters were downstairs in the living room at the time of the crash.
“I didn’t realize that it actually happened,” Oliveira said. “I was upstairs getting dressed when I heard it. Debris started falling on top of me, so I knew something was going on.”
Oliveira said she initially thought maybe a chimney had collapsed, but then she heard a man in her attic.
“My first reaction was, ‘Why is there a homeless guy in my attic?’ ” she said. “I slammed the door and I remember running ... and I yelled to the girls to run.”
As her daughters were running to the front door, Oliveira said, a neighbor ran inside, scooped up the girls and told the family to “get out of the house now.”
“My first thought was, ‘How does he know there’s a homeless guy in my attic?’ ” Oliveira said. “I didn’t know what was going on — but as I was walking out of the house, calling the police, I looked up and I saw the plane.”
Wings and half of the body of the glider stuck out of the attic, with the tail snapped in half.
One of the aircraft’s wings fell on the other side of the house, almost hitting Oliveira’s car. She said the wing landed where her children usually play outside.
“They were inside, almost ready for dinner, so thank God they weren’t outside,” she said.
“At this point, we don't know how much it’s going to cost to fix because the FAA is doing the investigation” Oliveira said. “They’re going to be pulling out the airplane, so that’s kind of when we’ll figure out what’s going on with that.”
Oliveira’s family, the Wirags, have owned the late-19th century house for more than 60 years, according to land records.
Oliveira said her grandmother died not long ago, and items of sentimental value were stored in the attic.
“I haven’t been up there, so I’m hoping to find out once they pull everything out,” she said.
Fire Chief TJ Wiedl said Tuesday’s accident was fortunate — because no fuel was in the plane, there was no risk of fire.
“It’s pretty amazing,” said Deputy Fire Chief Bernie Meehan. “The plane went through the roof but missed the rafters of the house.”
Meehan said the building official is assessing the damage but it should be habitable in a day or so.
The attic saw the bulk of the damage, while damage to the the second floor was less severe, Boughton said.
“It’s not catastrophic,” the mayor said. “They have work to do. The big thing, though, is no one was hurt.”
The aircraft’s fuselage remained embedded in the roof overnight until FAA officials could come to the scene to assess the damage Wednesday.
The pilot was taken to the hospital for treatment of minor injuries, and Oliveira and her daughters were taken for evaluation.
Oliveira — whose daughters were shaken up and “concerned about where (they’re) going to live” — said she thinks the pilot needs to take “a little bit more responsibility” for what happened.
“It really upset me that he didn’t even think about us,” she said. “My daughter has PTSD now because of it. Every little thing — a screech from a chair — she’s jumping up. We were in the hospital and she was afraid a plane was going to hit the hospital. She’s afraid to sleep in her top bunk bed because she’s afraid that if she’s in the top bunk, then the plane’s going to hit her.”
Oliveira said she’s waiting for the pilot to reach out, to at the very least, apologize.
“He just said, ‘It can be fixed.’ He wasn’t worried about the house or my two small children who could have been killed.”
Nejame could not be reached for comment Wednesday.