Yesterday a jet from Miramar Naval Air Station crashed into a San Deigo neighborhood, setting several homes on fire and killing a family that included a grandmother, a mother and two small children. The pilot ejected safely. According to the morning news, the pilot reported losing an engine over the Pacific Ocean, which ultimately resulted in the horrible crash.
I can't even begin to express my outrage over this. It will be called an "accident" and will be quickly forgotten, except of course by the family of these four who were killed. Some will say it is the price we pay for our military maintaining their readiness to defend us. I say that's b.s.
I have lived in Northern San Deigo County/Southern Riverside County for nearly thirty years and during much of that time I have endured the annoying sound of low flying helicopters from Camp Pendleton. I don't exactly know how this happened, but my previous home in Fallbrook and my current home in another city are both directly in the flight path of these helicopters. On many, many occasions it has occurred to me that one of these choppers could crash into my neighborhood or even my home.
The people in certain San Diego neighborhoods must endure something even more frightening - the daily practice take-offs and landings of the screaming jets at Miramar. Every time I drive on the 805, the 15 or the 163, all of which surround the air station, I wonder if one of those low flying jets will crash onto the freeway and take out dozens of innocent motorists. Now the worst has happened and a family is dead.
I have so many questions about this horrible crash. Why did the pilot not stay with his plane and try to maneuver it to crash into a field or the ocean? Since he lost the engine over the ocean, why did he not eject and let the plane go down there? In saving his own life, did he not even think about the other lives that might be lost? If he was too young and inexperienced to know how to react in such an emergency, why was he not practicing out in the desert where he couldn't kill anyone?
I know very little about aviation, and certainly nothing about what it takes to fly a fighter jet, but if if I give the pilot the benefit of the doubt and accept that he did the best he could, I still am furious that this kind of thing could happen.
I have wondered for a long time why the military needs to do so many practice flights which cost millions of taxpayer dollars. Yes, pilots must learn to fly jets and helicopters, but must they do so many, and is a residential area the best place to do that?
I think it's time to relocate some of these air stations into unpopulated areas. San Diego is no longer an appropriate place for a naval jet training facility.
What good does it do to keep our military in a state of readiness if it kills civilians in the process?
