7 days ago
911 calls capture frantic moments after plane crashes in Pines neighborhood
The 911 calls released by authorities reveal how neighbors frantically tried to extricate a family of four out of plane that crashed into a tree into a Pembroke Pines neighborhood Sunday night.
Pilot Carlos Balza Cardenas, 58, was flying the six-seat 1976 Cessna T337G toward North Perry Airport in Pembroke Pines around 8 p.m. when it slammed into the tree, plummeting into the front yard of a home in the 6800 block of Southwest 14th Street. Balza Cardenas was headed home to his Weston home from the British Virgin Islands with his wife Fanely Maurette Diaz and two teenage daughters, Carol and Nicole Balza.
The family survived but were hospitalized. Balza Cardenas is listed as the owner of the aircraft on Federal Aviation Administration records.
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Four neighbors rushed to rescue the trapped family when a fire broke out in the aircraft engine, filling the plane with thick smoke, said the Pembroke Pines Police incident report. They hosed down the flames and tried to reach the passengers, according to a video shot by Giovanna Hanley, 30, whose mother lives across the street from the crash site.
Calls made to 911, released to the Herald Wednesday, captured the scene's chaos.
'Oh my God, they're trying to get them out of the plane ... There's people trying to put out the fire now and there's a lady screaming, who's caught in the airplane right now,' one woman described to dispatchers, who advised her to steer clear of the plane and not let bystanders approach the crash site.
Pounding sounds in the background of another 911 call captured the moment neighbors took a hammer to the aircraft, shouting 'Get away from the window,' as they tried to free passengers.
'Oh my God, this is what I'm talking about, living here,' a woman told dispatchers, echoing the frustrations of many living in the neighborhood, who've witnessed other aircraft from North Perry Airport crashing or nearly crashing into their suburban community over the years.
Fanely Maurette had her legs pinned inside the plane, proving the hardest for neighbors to free, the report says. She, along with her husband and their two teenage daughters, Carol, 16, and Nicole, 13, were rushed to Memorial Regional Hospital by Pembroke Pines Fire Rescue.
On Monday, the agency told the Herald that the 16-year-old, whom it did not name, was labeled a 'Level 1 Trauma,' indicative of potentially life-threatening injuries. The other three family members were considered 'Level Two Traumas,' having stable vital signs when arriving at the hospital. The agency said Wednesday it had no updates on the family's condition.
The family was vacationing on the island of Tortola, Balza Cardenas told investigators, and made an earlier pit stop to refuel in Puerto Rico. When he lowered his landing gear, he 'went to add throttle but there was no thrust and the plane lost altitude and crashed.'
Report details also show that an employee from North Perry Airport, which serves small private planes and training flights for new pilots, told officers they did not receive a mayday call from the plane before it crashed.
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The incident is one of more than 30 crashes around North Perry Airport over the past five years, Pembroke Pines Mayor Angelo Castillo told the Herald. He said he's pushing Broward County, which owns the airport, to conduct an independent safety study, saying the frequency of plane crashes in the area is 'no longer acceptable.'
'You get these milquetoast excuses from the county about how safe they are and some other word salad responses and they do nothing,' he said. '....This is a problem in Pembroke Pines, and I need to hear the county say, 'Yes, we have a problem and we're going to figure out a way to get better.'
For residents like Hanley, who was visiting her mother when the Cessna dove into the tree across the street, the crash struck a personal chord. She's a friend of the Bishops, a Pembroke Pines family whose 4-year-old son Taylor was killed in 2021 when a small plane that had just taken off from North Perry Airport crashed into his mother's SUV. Taylor was in the car.
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Taylor's mom, Megan Bishop, said she hopes Sunday's crash is the tipping point for officials who haven't pushed for safety changes at the airport.
'I'm praying this is the one,' she told the Herald. 'My son should still be here.... If change doesn't come, then my son's death was in vain. And that's the last thing I want.'
