DIAMOND POINT — Two pilots and a passenger walked away unscathed late today after a private plane crash-landed short of the runway and collided with another plane waiting to take off at the east end of the Diamond Point Airport.
Witness accounts of the collision shortly after 4 p.m. said a Piper Cherokee 180 flown by Dennis Rech of Olympia came in too low and his landing gear struck a berm between the east end of the runway and Diamond Point Road.
Rech’s aircraft spun and struck the right wing of a Cessna 150 piloted by Theodore Calderone, who was waiting at the end of the runway with passenger Ernie Hanson, both of Diamond Point, to take off.
Rech’s plane landed, and part of its landing gear collapsed, rupturing the fuel tanks in the wing, and made a 180-degree slide landing on the paved runway.
“He essentially came in on top of them, and he got spun around,” said Mary Dee Countryman, a volunteer firefighter with the Diamond Point Fire Station for Clallam County Fire District 3.
The fire station crew based near the airport was first on the scene to spray the 30 gallons of fuel that spilled from the wreckage with fire retardant foam.
