Remembering the Air Disaster Over Cerritos, California

I remember the day, August 31st, 1986, like it were yesterday. It was a hot day. It was a weekend day, and I had spent the entire weekend with my dad and stepmother at their condo in Santa Fe Springs, California. I remember sitting in the living room just flipping through the stations on the television. After selecting a suitable program to watch, it was only a few minutes later that a special news bulletin interrupted my program with a special bulletin about a plane crash in Cerritos.

Immediately, the screen was filled with images of smoke, fire, emergency vehicles and utter chaos engulfing this quaint suburb of Los Angeles. I was in disbelief. I called out to my dad who quickly joined me in watching the events unfold on the television screen. I lived in Cerritos then, as I do now. Cerritos was my home where my mother and stepfather lived and where I lived when I wasn't away visiting my dad on weekends.

The funny thing is, I had no thoughts of fear or doom concerning the welfare of my mom and stepfather or any of my neighbors and friends. I was still trying to digest the shock of having an airplane crash into our small city. As the newscast continued, the location of the crash was determined, and it was not in our neighborhood but roughly two miles east. I knew my family and street and neighbors were safe.

As more information became available, it was determined that not one, but two, airplanes had crashed into Cerritos. The first plane was a large commercial jetliner - an Aeromexico DC-9 - that was headed for Los Angeles International Airport - roughly twenty-miles west of Cerritos. The second plane was a small four-passenger Piper Cherokee that was en-route to Big Bear Lake, a local resort town in the nearby San Bernardino Mountains.