=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/news/archive/2005/01/20/s= tate1458EST0087.DTL --------------------------------------------------------------------- Thursday, January 20, 2005 (AP) 20 years later, memories of air disaster still strong (01-20) 15:35 PST RENO, Nev. (AP) -- Mike D'Amico remembers driving one of the fire trucks first to arrive on the scene of the worst airplane crash in Reno history at 1:04 a.m. Jan. 21, 1985. Friday marks the 20th anniversary of the disaster that claimed the lives of 70 passengers and crew members when Galaxy Flight 203 went down and exploded shortly after takeoff from Reno-Cannon International Airport, since renamed Reno-Tahoe. D'Amico, still an airport firefighter, remembers the crash scene on that early morning after Super Bowl Sunday. "Everything was black," said D'Amico, 49, who was unable to distinguish bodies amid the wreckage, at first. "You couldn't make out a body until you actually saw one. Once you saw one, you saw them all," he told the Reno Gazette-Journal in an interview this week. There would be only one survivor, George Lamson Jr., 17, of Minnesota, w= ho was miraculously thrown clear of the burning wreckage. "One of the first things we saw was the boy," said George Kitchen, who w= as a captain in the Reno Fire Department leading a crew from station No. 6 in south Reno. "He was still strapped in his seat out on South Virginia Street. He was conscious. We gave him first aid until the medics got there," he told the newspaper. The Lockheed L-188A Electra, a four-engine turboprop, took off from Reno-Cannon, on its way to Minneapolis-St. Paul early on that Monday morning. There were six crew members and 65 passengers who'd spent the weekend of Super Bowl XIX at Lake Tahoe on a gambling junket. It was a charter flight operated by Galaxy Airlines. "We saw it crash," said Floyd Arterburn, who still lives with his wife, Jeanne, near the accident site. "My boy and I ran out to South Virginia Street. Somebody was screaming out in the field." The plane crashed south of the airport runway in a field on the east side of South Virginia. The pilot was trying to return to Reno-Cannon for an emergency landing after reporting a severe vibration, possibly caused by an open service-access door under one wing. The National Transportation Safety Board report said the plane went down when the pilot, Allen Heasley, reacted to the vibration incorrectly by ordering an engine power reduction. Two other passengers survived the crash impact and fire but died later of injuries and burns. One was Lamson's father, George Lamson Sr. The other was Robert Miggins. Both were from Minnesota. "By the time we got there, the only parts that were visible were one engine and one wing," D'Amico said. "The building on the east side of the street was burning. There were two motor homes. It almost looked like they'd been parked (in the middle of) Virginia Street." The building was a recreational vehicle dealership. "We theorized that the plane hit short of this ditch, went up in the air and dropped on those motor homes," said D'Amico, an original member of the airport fire department formed in 1980. "The explosions we heard, those were (motor home) propane tanks going off." In the past 20 years, there's been development along South Virginia Stre= et where the plane crashed. The fields are filled with retail stores and office buildings. If a plane crashed today, there would be more objects to hit. "It would be terrible," Kitchen said. The crash came just hours after northern Nevada and the rest of the country celebrated one of the nation's biggest unofficial holidays Super Bowl Sunday. D'Amico went on duty at 7:30 a.m. Jan. 20, to work a 24-hour shift. He a= nd the other firefighters at the airport watched Super Bowl XIX on television as the San Francisco 49ers defeated the Miami Dolphins 38-16 at Stanford Stadium. 49ers quarterback Joe Montana threw three touchdown passes and ran for another. D'Amico was happy. "I was a Joe Montana fan," D'Amico said. At his home on South Virginia Street, Floyd Arterburn watched the Super Bowl with his son, Joey, and his wife, Jeanne. They stayed up late. "It hit a field, hit a ditch, it hit the (motor homes), then it hit the building," Floyd Arterburn, 69, said of the crash. "That's where it rested. I was looking at the plane. It just exploded. It exploded three times." D'Amico was asleep in the airport fire station when the emergency call came. "The alarm went off," he said. "It said there was an aircraft down. We looked out the window. The window faces south. We saw the glow. We knew it was something bad." Kitchen was on duty in the Reno Fire Department's station at Longley Lane and Mira Loma Drive. "It came in as a possible explosion in the area of Meadowood Mall," said Kitchen, who retired in 1999. "Then we had a report of a possible helicopter crash." Kitchen and his crew arrived at the crash from the south, fighting the fire from the opposite side of the wreckage from D'Amico and the airport firefighters. "We covered some of the bodies up," Kitchen said. Information from: Reno Gazette-Journal, www.rgj.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2005 AP