Broomfield residents have never seen the sights they saw on Saturday after plane crashes landed in their lawns and damaged their properties.
A Boeing 777 en route to Hawaii must have had an emergency on Saturday to spit parts over the Northmoor area.
“Were we attacked?”
This is what Mary Ellen Sucato thought when she heard loud booms. The 81-year-old was upstairs when plane crashes rained down on her surroundings. She could laugh about it when she realized what had happened. Across the street from her home in Elmwood Street was a 20-foot tower-shaped object that was in front of Kirby Klements’ door.
“I first thought it was part of a UFO,” Sucato said.
Clement was with his wife in his house when he heard a loud bang. The couple looked at each other and tried to find out what happened, he said. Outside, the “UFO” crashed just outside its front window. Klements’ truck was also damaged.
“At first I thought it was waste from a trampoline from my neighbor’s garden,” he said. ‘Came out and immediately knew it was the front of an engine of an airplane.
“There was a lot of debris raining from the sky.”
Kirby Klements of Broomfield describes her Saturday when rubbish from a jet ended up in his garden. pic.twitter.com/XsQ223Isol
– kieran nicholson (@kierannicholson) 20 February 2021
Emergency calls, including police, ambulances and firefighters, quickly poured into the neighborhood around 1 p.m. Sirens and lights replaced the boom, Sucato said, and “people are running everywhere.”
Hundreds of people gathered at Northmoor, where debris landed near 13th Avenue and Elmwood Avenue. Parts spread throughout the area, and so did bystanders.
A woman who was driving in the area with her window down shouted at the crowd: ‘An airplane that caught fire? It’s wild! She said.
Sucato said in the nearly 50 years she’s lived in Elmwood Avenue, she’s never seen anything like it.
‘It shook the house a little’
Elsewhere in Northmoor, Cindy and John Basile reacted differently as the commercial plane hovered over their home.
“I heard a loud boom, and it shook the house a little bit,” John Basile said when describing his experience. He initially thought someone’s water heater had inflated. However, he also remembered that he had heard a plane flying overhead.
“But I did not put two and two together,” he said.
Cindy Basile, meanwhile, immediately searched for John in their home to make sure he was ready. The couple left their home to find the neighborhood littered with aircraft debris.
Andy Cross, The Denver Post
Aircraft parts were spreading across a soccer field in Broomfield Commons Park on February 20, 2021. A United 777 plane dropped an engine and scattered parts throughout the nearby neighborhood and Broomfield Commons Park.
“Absolutely happy”
Broomfield police officer Todd Dahlbach said on Saturday night no injuries were reported in connection with the crash. Two houses were damaged, as well as several vehicles.
“We are absolutely happy that no one was hurt,” Dahlbach said.
On a normal Saturday, Commons Park would be filled with families enjoying extracurricular activities, especially for an extraordinarily mild February day. Instead, the park was full of aircraft parts. Some parts were as large as 3 feet long.
The National Transportation Safety Board was in Broomfield at 5pm to investigate the incident.
Any resident who believes they have aircraft debris on their property can call Broomfield Police at 303-438-6400. Residents who have property damage can monitor Broomfield police and social media for help with their future claims.