|
Live on the Air, Then Into the
Water…
Off Manhattan Island, New
York
October 22ndh,
1986
Roots in Rock...
Born October 1, 1947
in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Jane Dornacker was one of the first female
letter carriers in the United States in 1969. But she became a rock
musician on the local San Francisco scene in the late 1970s. The
tall, engaging lead singer, with the stage name of "Leila", she was the
keyboardist and songwriter of the San Francisco "tack" rock group "Leila
And The Snakes" with Pearl Gates and Pamela Wood providing supporting
vocals. She parlayed her talents, and tried acting, appearing in
playwright Sam Shepard's jazz opera "Inacoma" at San Francisco's Magic
Theatre in 1977, and was featured in other works by the Overtone
Theatre.
She is best known for her role
as mysterious and humorless Nurse Murch in the film The Right Stuff.
Jane developed a successful career as a stand-up comedian on the San Francisco
circuit and did her first work as a traffic reporter for KFRC, a Bay Area radio
station. She worked with Dr. Don Rose, who was a popular disc jockey at the
time. As she did traffic, she would tell her daughter Naomi to get up and get to
school. She moved to New York City to become a much loved raspy-voiced "trafficologist"
and "Jane-in-a-plane", working for WNBC 66 AM.
Up in the Sky...
On October 22, 1986, at 4:44
PM, Dornacker was broadcasting one of the station's N-Copter traffic reports.
Tithe helicopter, an Enstrom F-28F, tail number N8617B,
was being piloted by Bill Pate. The helo was flying at about 75 feet off
of the Hudson River's surface. On her radio broadcast she was giving a report of
an accident involving a tractor trailer and a car as well as a car fire. She
also stated that the outbound Holland Tunnel was heavy with traffic and that the
Lincoln Tunnel was much better with traffic and a car fire.
Dornacker was starting her
report for incoming New Jersey traffic when the helicopter stalled in mid
broadcast. Dornacker screamed, "Hit the
water! Hit the water! Hit the water!" - then silence.
After the
broadcast scrambled out, a stunned disc jockey, Joey Reynolds, told listeners,
"Okay, we're going to play some music here or something... and find out what
happened to the helicopter." as the station transitioned to the song
"Hip To Be Square", by Huey Lewis & The News.
According to
WNBC, an estimated 1 million listeners were tuned in at the time of impact.
Click here to listen to The final
broadcast of the N-Copter and Jane Dornacker... (.wav file - 1.14 mB)
After the musical interlude,
Joey Reynolds made mention of a prior mishap in a helicopter at Dornacker had
been in six months earlier. On
April 27, 1986, aboard a
Engstrom F-28C, the helo departed the waterfront helipad. As it went over the
water, the pilot noted a loss of engine power, and he tried to return to the
helipad. But the rotor RPMs continued to degrade, and the helicopter
settled into the water & sank. Both Dornacker, and the the pilot swan to safety
from the wreck.
"In the Drink..."
What most of the listeners did not know is that Dornacker’s helicopter
nosedived, struck the top of a chain link fence at a river pier, crashed into
the Hudson River very near to the Manhattan shore, near
the U.S.S. Intrepid museum at 46th
street, on the west side of Manhattan,
and sank into 15 to 20 feet of
water. Both occupants were trapped for nearly 10-15 minutes before help arrived.
A rescue crew
equipped with scuba gear, pulled both victims from the water within 10 minutes
of the crash, said Assistant Chief of Patrol Gerard Kerins
Firefighter
Paul Hashagen, 35, swam 20 feet down to unhook Pate from his seatbelt and bring
him to the surface. He then returned to find Dornacker floating inside the
helicopter and brought her up. "Both were unconscious and not breathing
when I found them," Hashagen, a blanket around his shoulders, said at Bellevue
Hospital, where he was treated for exposure and released.
Jane Dornacker was declared dead at 8:20 p.m. on her way to Saint Vincent's
Hospital. She was 39 years old. Her pilot and only other occupant, Bill Pate,
was severely injured, requiring surgery
for internal abdominal bleeding and moths of rehab,
but ultimately survived the
ordeal.
A Train of Abuses...
In the subsequent investigation,
the NTSB found that the sprag clutch that was installed in the helicopter (on
lease to WNBC Radio) was a military surplus part, which was not designed for use
in a civilian aircraft, and that the part had not been adequately lubricated.
"It was determined that the clutch is
unauthorized for the helicopter and, in addition, some internal components of
the clutch do not conform to blueprint specifications," according to Frank
Ghiorsi, chief of the regional office of the NTSB headquartered in New York, in
a statement released a week after the crash.
It directly led to a mid-air
seizure of the main rotor blades. The staff of WNBC were so appalled at the
revelation of this negligence, that at one point they threatened to resign en
masse.
The manufacturer of the helicopter, Enstrom,
was owned by Manchester, New Hampshire, businessman Dean Kamen (who later would
invent the Segway IT), and was run by defense attorney F. Lee Bailey from 1971
to 1980.
Bailey told news reporters that he had flown
the same helicopter in which Ms. Dornacker crashed, and said, "If there had been
a design defect we would have known about it. It would have shown up in the
first 100 hours and it didn't."
The real bombshell of the investigation was
dropped when an unidentified mechanic, who was am employee of Spectrum
Helicopters, the owner of the helicopter, said he grabbed the wrong clutch off
a work bench while fixing-the helicopter's transmission.
A month after the crash, Spectrum Helicopters
Inc. of Ridgefield, New Jersey, was issued an emergency order by the FAA in
which it charged that the company conducted faulty repairs on the three-seat
helicopter 20 days before the fatal crash on October 22nd. The FAA
further charged that Spectrum failed to train its pilots properly, failed to
maintain proper operations and maintenance records, and operated a second
helicopter, a Bell 206B, when it too was unsafe to fly.
A Legend's Legacy...
Dornacker's then 16-year-old
daughter, Naomi, received $325,000 in a settlement with the owner and maker of
the helicopter. What made Dornacker's death even more tragic is that Naomi's
father,aomi had died shortly before her mother's death.
All the New York radio stations grounded their traffic helicopter
fleets for a few days
after Dornacker's accident.
A memorial concert in celebration of Jane
Dornacker's life took place at the Warfield Theatre in
San Francisco on Saturday, November 22, 1986. Dr. Don Rose arranged
several more tributes for Dornacker, in order to help Naomi pay for college.
There is a memorial to Dornacker
in Wayne, New Jersey, where she and her family lived.
|
