Pilot Douses Fire with Garden Hose After Crash

Brian Veatch works for the South Metro Fire and Rescue District in Colorado but on weekends he pilots a banner airplane for an insurance company. The other day he took off on a job to fly over the crowd at a Colorado Rockies game, but as soon as he left the airfield he reported he was having trouble gaining altitude. He ditched his banner, but that didn't help and he continued to have difficulty climbing. He turned the plane around and headed back to the airport but the engine stopped completely and he crashed into the home of Matthew Richardson and his fiancée. Luckily, they were at work and not at home at the time. Somehow Veatch only had minor injuries from the crash, so he climbed out of the cockpit and since the plane was on fire, he walked over to the side of the house, picked up a garden hose and tried to extinguish the fire before burning fuel forced him away.

Neighbor Shanna Rudd told CNN that she and her husband knew something was wrong because the plane was flying so low. "I saw it go down and then the smoke afterwards," a neighbor said. "It was so scary. I've never seen anything like that before." The plane was totally destroyed. The tail and a shattered wing were sticking out from the roof and wall of what was left of the home in Northglenn, 10 miles north of Denver. 

In a strange twist of fate, Veatch didn't notice that the house he crashed into was actually the house he used to live in a decade earlier. He was probably a little confused since he crashed upside down and was probably a little disoriented. So far the location of Monday's crash looks like a coincidence.