By now, I'm sure you've seen the news about an F-18 jet that crashed into a residential neighborhood here in San Diego yesterday. (And for those of you who called me personally to confirm that all was well, thank you!) This event, while extremely unfortunate and not without consequence, does not, however, deserve the public's further scorn of military personnel in the area.
Reading some of the comments left on blogs and articles reporting on this tragedy quite honestly make me sick. I am sure that the pilot, who would have received an extensive amount of training before ever setting foot into that aircraft, did everything he could to protect not only his life, but also the lives of innocent civilians on the ground. When there are no functioning engines on an aircraft, there is no power to that aircraft. Without power, that F-18 was no more than a falling rock, and, try though he might to angle the trajectory of that rock into an uninhabited area, there is only so much he could have done.
The answer here is not to relocate Miramar, as so many have voiced their support for. Nor would it be prudent to convert Miramar into a commercial airport. (Because really, when a 757 crashes into your house, it's not going to be 4 lives that are lost, it's going to be about 400.) Pilots are not infallible human beings (though they sometimes like to think so), and paining this young man in a negative light is almost inhuman. I'm sure the knowledge that 4 people are dead as a result of his aircraft's malfunction is something that will weigh heavily on his mind and the minds of many for quite sometime. The pictures of him on his cell phone immediately following the crash are not reasons for his crucifixtion: no doubt, he was calling military emergency crews to the scene, not calling his drinking buddies with a "Duuuuude...." story. And the fact that the military currently has jurisdiction over the crash scene is not something that is being done to "cover up" what really happened. On the contrary: this was a MILITARY exercise conducted by a MILITARY pilot that went unspeakably wrong. And it will be the MILITARY that finds out what exactly that was. So back off.
And, P.S. San Diego, should you be successful in your push to relocate Miramar, don't you dare open your mouth to complain when those helicopters with their ability to dump thousands upon thosands gallons of water on your burning county in the middle of fire season are hundreds of miles away.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I finally got to my room from work, blogged for a little while, then read yours. And I concede to you: yes, you can read my mind.
Other than the initial report that it happened and some later reports that night, not a whole lot has been heard about that crash out here. The initial report lead to me and Andrew talking on the phone trying to make sense of it... finally realizing that A) Ian wasn't IN San Diego at the time, B) doesn't fly fighter jets, and C) you live significantly north of Miramar and as far as we could tell, the crash happened pretty close to Mirarmar. We are excellent deducers. (Of course we could have been wrong about all 3 counts) But that's all thats been on the local news here.
So while I didn't hear about the backlash that this crash caused, sadly, I'm not surprised. And I really like your point about people complaining when the city is on fire again and not having the nice water dropping aircraft RIGHT THERE!
It's pretty sad that people are using a tragedy to make cheap political points. People have NIMBY mindsets pretty much everywhere; it's annoying but comes with any public policy endeavor. People always want the public goods government can provide, they just don't want the infrastructure to provide it anywhere near them. It'd be asinine to move out of Miramar for a variety of reasons and the fact that people are annoy by noise isn't really relevant to the discussion.
Post a Comment