Miraculous Survival (With Innovative Parachute): Plane Crash in Northern Mendocino CO Leaves Man, Woman, & Child With Only Minor Injuries

Yesterday, about 1:30 p.m., a small plane, a 2004 Cirrus SR22, encountered trouble shortly after takeoff and crashed in a wooded area of northern Mendocino County near Whale Gulch. Remarkably, everyone on board, including a very young child, walked away with only minor injuries. In part, this appears to be because the plane was equipped with the only entire plane parachute system approved by the FAA.

Local resident Amber Rashall spoke to us by phone of the day’s events. She said she heard an unusual sound about 1:30 p.m. “I was sitting inside my house, and I heard very loud kind of like boom, noise,” Rashall explained. Upon investigating, she saw a plane not far away with a parachute slowing its descent. However, after she ran inside to grab a phone to call for help, when she returned, the aircraft had vanished from sight, leading her to think it had crashed into a valley.

After calling and reporting the incident, Rashall went to her sister-in-law’s home nearby. There a neighbor came by telling them that the crash had happened not far from their driveway.

Upon reaching the crash site, the group discovered the aircraft on the ground, its parachute tangled in the trees above. “We ran down there…and there’s a plane, you know, probably 15 feet…down the little hill off of our driveway,” Rashall said. She explained that she soon learned that the plane had “floated down” attached to a parachute with the occupants–two adults and a child–still inside. The parachute had eventually hung up in a tree. “They were there for probably a few minutes and then it fell to the ground,” Rashall told us.

The plane landed in brush upside down, but the three passengers were fortunate to escape with minor injuries. “They voiced to us that that was the worst part of the crash, just the falling to the ground, but they were really lucky…the little girl had not a scratch on her,” Rashall said.

The small community there helped them get out of the plane, Rashall told us. “Basically me and my sister-in-law and two of our neighbors kind of sat with them and helped to get their stuff out of the plane,” she told us. “The plane was starting to burn a little bit.” So the local residents helped the passengers get their stuff away from the plane. Rashall explained that though the plane did smoke, it didn’t catch fire.

The Whale Gulch Volunteer Fire Department and the Shelter Cove Fire Department arrived soon after as they are located relatively nearby. The Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies eventually arrived at the remote scene outside of their county to secure the situation until Mendocino County Sheriff’s deputies could arrive at the incident as the latter cannot drive directly to that remote area but instead has to travel through a portion of Humboldt County to get there.

The cause of the accident was not immediately clear, though Rashall mentioned that the pilot did say he had been trying to avoid crashing into the ocean. She said that the passengers were from Santa Rosa and had spent the night in Shelter Cove before heading south from the airport there and then crashing near Whale Gulch.

In the coming weeks, there will likely be an investigation. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is responsible for looking into non-military aircraft accidents to determine their cause and to issue safety recommendations that can prevent future accidents. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which regulates and oversees all aspects of American civil aviation, also might be interested given that this is a plane equipped with the unique safety feature of a parachute system for the entire aircraft.

Earlier: Plane Crash on Usal Road in Northern Mendocino