16 hours ago
A jet crashed into their neighborhood. Now they live in dread below an active flight path.
Srujana McCarty shields her head with her hands when an aircraft flies overhead.
It's an involuntary reaction now, much like how her neighbors Aislyn Maupin and Renee Rivera freeze up and fixate on passing planes and jets until they're out of sight.
They know it's improbable for an aircraft to plummet from the sky above them.
But one did two weeks ago as they slept.
On May 22, a pilot attempting to land a private jet at an airport nearby struck power lines and crashed into their San Diego military housing neighborhood, killing all six passengers on board, officials said.
While the lives on the ground were spared, the disaster displaced dozens of families and shattered their sense of safety. McCarty's and Rivera's children still see the phantom flames down their hallways and streets.
'It's a new fear unlocked,' McCarty said.
The survivors are trying to recover. But they live below an active flight path about 2 miles from the airport. About every 30 minutes, an aircraft roars above and brings them back to the morning fire roused them out of bed.
'It terrifies me knowing that we have planes coming over here all day, all the time,' Rivera said. 'It's a lot to be reminded of every single day.'
On the night of the crash, before McCarty and her husband, Ben, went to sleep, they tucked in their two young sons, put their dogs in crates, locked their doors and set the alarm.
'Everything was set up for their safety,' said Ben McCarty, 33, who has served in the Navy for 13 years.
Stillness fell over Murphy Canyon, home to more than 4,900 Navy families in one of the largest military housing complexes in the world.
Then, just before 4 a.m., a Cessna 550 Citation jet slammed into the front yard of the McCartys' home, partially collapsing their roof and thrusting one of their trucks into the living room.
Waves of heat from the fire instantly penetrated their bedroom, jolting them awake.
'The impact rushed over me,' Ben McCarty said. 'I felt like this strong wind or force, the heat.'
Srujana McCarty, 32, let out a nightmarish shriek. But outside, the deafening booms from exploding cars and the panicked voices of other neighbors screaming to find their children drowned her out.
The couple grabbed their sons, ages 2 and 4, and their dogs. The path to the front door was blocked by fire. The wall where their wedding photos hung was crumbling and burning, so the family fled out the back.
Next door, Maupin was in a deep sleep when her 14-year-old daughter barged into her bedroom, screaming about a fire outside of her open window.
In disbelief, Maupin looked outside and found a hellscape.
'The whole street was just in flames,' she said.
Jet fuel snaked down the street, setting every vehicle in its path ablaze, law enforcement officials said.
'Everything on fire all at once,' San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl told reporters. 'It was pretty horrific to see.'
Maupin said people were knocking on doors, telling people their homes were on fire.
'People were pushing us and telling us we had to go this way,' she said.
Maupin and her daughter helped their neighbors evacuate, each taking a baby to safeguard. Maupin remembers seeing a young woman, standing alone in the middle of the street, paralyzed in fear.
'People were screaming, 'Where are my kids?'' she said. 'Things are exploding everywhere.'
Nearby, Rivera heard banging on her front door. She had seen the light from the explosion but thought it must have been lightning.
'I never in a million years thought a plane hit the ground,' she said.
Half asleep, Rivera, 28, herded her 2-year-old asthmatic daughter, grandmother, two dogs and two guinea pigs into a car.
As she drove away, she thought of all the children in the neighborhood. Her heart sank, thinking there was no way everyone in the neighborhood would survive. But miraculously no one on the ground was killed.
'Seeing it happen firsthand right in front of you,' she said, 'it changes everything.'
McCarty replays each moment of her family's escape when she suddenly wakes up every morning around 3:45 a.m. at roughly the time of the crash. The sleepless nights are hard, but so are the days when planes seem to be constantly flying overhead.
'We hold our breath now every time a plane goes over,' she said.
The McCartys are staying in a temporary house in the same military housing community until they're able to move into a new unit in about a week.
They had only one plea for those tasked with their relocation. 'We asked to get out of the flight path,' Ben McCarty said. 'It was the No. 1 priority for both of us — anywhere away from the flight path.'
Their neighbor, Thomas Lawrence, said his three young children had the same request.
'We had to change streets because they didn't want to live close to the scene of the crash anymore,' he said. 'It was unanimous. Even I didn't want to go back either.'
The Navy families live in the shadow of Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport, which primarily serves small aircraft and is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, according to its website. The airport sees more than 386,000 takeoffs and landings a year.
The six passengers aboard the private jet were headed there from New Jersey, the National Transportation Safety Board said.
Their cross-country flight was about 2 miles southeast of the airfield when, amid dense fog, the jet struck high-tension power lines and went down around 3:47 a.m., officials said. There were no survivors aboard.
Music talent agent Dave Shapiro, 42, was killed, as were two employees of his Sound Talent Group, Kendall Fortner, 24, and Emma Huke, 25, according to the city's medical examiner's office. The crash also killed Daniel Williams, 39, a drummer for the band The Devil Wears Prada; Dominic Damian, 41, a software engineer; and Celina Kenyon, 36, a photographer.
The cause of the crash is under investigation. A spokesperson for the NTSB said the agency expects to release its preliminary report in the next few weeks.
In the immediate aftermath, it displaced about 100 residents, Wahl, the police chief, said.
About 39 families were temporarily relocated, and two homes were significantly damaged, according to Gail Miller, chief operating officer of Liberty Military Housing, which provides homes for the families.
Miller said the housing provider worked closely with the families to determine their preferences, recognizing that many would not want to return to their original units.
Today, Miller said, 31 families have either returned to their original home in Murphy Canyon or have accepted a new home in the same community or elsewhere.
The crash was the latest in a string of deadly aviation accidents this year that has sparked fear and unease.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said the skies are safe, pointing to 35 million annual flights that occur in the U.S. with very few incidents.
An NBC News analysis of federal data also shows that incidents and deaths on flights have not been rising compared with previous years, and that the number of deaths aboard aircraft in the U.S. is also on the decline.
Still, for survivors triggered by the sight of an aircraft, the statistics do little to ease anxieties.
In the aftermath of some cases of aviation trauma, constant exposure to planes and jets can be helpful in overcoming fears, but for others, the overexposure can prevent recovery, said Jessica Auslander, a North Carolina-based psychologist with the Centre for Aviation Psychology.
'The brain becomes hypervigilant for any other future signs of danger, to protect ourselves,' she said. 'It has basically learned, hey, this is possible. How can we keep ourselves safe?'
Symptoms are most intense in the first few weeks after the incident but generally ease within one to three months, Auslander said.
To help get the families back on their feet, the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society said it has provided more than $80,000 in emergency assistance to more than 80 families affected by the crash.
The funds have gone toward insurance deductibles, uniform replacement, temporary housing costs, food and household essentials, said retired Navy Rear Adm. Dawn Cutler, the nonprofit's chief operations officer.
'It's going to be a road to recovery,' Cutler said.
For the families beginning to settle into their new homes, the emotional healing comes next.
Maupin grew up in the area by the airport, desensitized to planes. Now, when one passes, she says, 'everything stops and I just dissociate.'
'It's hard to conceptualize knowing you were so close to no longer being here anymore,' she said.
Rivera closes her eyes when she has to drive by the scene of the crash to leave the area. But her 2-year-old daughter stares directly at it.
'She says there's fire, there's fire everywhere,' Rivera said, adding that her daughter will begin seeing a therapist.
The McCartys, too, said they plan to seek counseling.
'We've somehow shut down and went numb just so we can move on,' Srujana McCarty said.
Her husband said the crash has left him feeling helpless. When they were looking for their replacement home, he said, his family's protection was the only thing that mattered.
'We didn't look if the kitchen was big,' he said. 'We looked in the backyard and said, where is the escape route?'
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