2 first responders reflect on Flight 427 crash in Beaver County 30 years later

BEAVER COUNTY, Pa. — Over the last 30 years, many police officers, firefighters, and investigators have shared their stories about the crash of U.S. Air Flight 427 in Beaver County.

For the very first time, two first responders are sharing their stories about the crash.

They were the first two volunteer firefighters on scene.

Channel 11′s Andrew Havranek found out there isn’t a day that goes by that they don’t think about what they saw.

Dan Caton was a firefighter when Flight 427 went down. He’d only been volunteering for a few months. Gary Van Newkirk was his chief.

They had just returned back to the station from a nearby car accident when they heard another call come across their radio.

“As soon as we got on Route 60 out here, we knew it wasn’t a small plane. There was fireball and the smoke ball in the air, was hundreds of feet in the air. I got on the radio to the county and told them, ‘Roll anything and everything you possibly thought we would need,’” Van Newkirk said.

They knocked the flames down quickly, and as the smoke started to clear, they saw just how devastating the crash was.

“Once it all kind of settled and the smoke cleared, and I went to take a step and Jeff grabbed ahold of me and pulled me backwards. He said, ‘Don’t step,’ And I looked down and there was a hand. Then it set in. You know, we sat and took a look around at what we were actually getting into,” Caton said.

Van Newkirk, Caton, and the other firefighters with them later found out what we all know now.

The flight from Chicago was minutes from landing at the Greater Pittsburgh International Airport and 132 people were on board.

No one survived.

The two men and their other colleagues spent nine days at the crash site. Caton says he was on site for 36 hours after Flight 427 crashed.

Van Newkirk started to set up a command center just down the hill in the shopping center parking lot.

He still has the plan he drew up that day, outlining everything they needed for this investigation.

“This is when we first got there, I came down and started an incident command that I wanted everyone to know where people were at and who was in charge. And then, as it went on, what we needed. Lighting,” Van Newkirk said.

Firefighters and other first responders see a lot in their line of work. But Van Newkirk and Caton say nothing could have prepared them for what they saw that day.

“We were in a tent and there was probably 15 of us that came off the hill that day. And they were crisis prevention or intervention people, like that. And the one lady started telling us what we saw. And I remember one guy, Arlen, he said, ‘Have you been up there?’ She said, ‘No,’ He says, ‘Then you don’t know what we saw,’” Caton recalled.

It was tough then. But, looking back on it now, 30 years later, van Newkirk and Caton are proud of their response.

They’re proud of the way their fellow volunteers served their community. They’re proud of the communication they had with other local, state, and federal investigation teams to clear and process the scene.

They hope other volunteers today can learn from them by sharing their stories.

“We never trained for this. I never want to see any of my brothers go through it,” Caton said.

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