Emergency landing in Fairview Monday, February 12, 2007

An RV4 experimental airplane sits on NE Alton Street in Fairview after pilot Rick Gray made an emergency landing on Jan. 31. The small two-seat airplane lost power shortly after takeoff from a private airstrip in Sandy. Gray had just purchased the plane from the man who built it. He had planned to fly it back to his home in Ohio.

A couple of weeks ago I promised some photos of the plane crash I covered for the Gresham Outlook. You can read the in-depth story and see another of my photos on their sister paper's website, the Sandy Post.

[The Outlook put that photo on the website right away. When it came time to publish the story in the next issue of the newspaper (Saturday), they decided to go with a different photo because the Oregonian (a daily) had published a similar photo. I thought they would use the one above, but instead they used the shot at right that shows the track the plane took down the street to its final resting place. Considering that the pilot could not have had much control over the airplane once it touched down, it is amazing that he didn't hit any parked cars, trees, or power lines. And, apart from some minor back pain, he walked away unscathed.]