A Fiery Tragedy in San Diego

The most memorable day in San Diego’s collective psyche, September 25, 1978, turned out to be a 101-degree scorcher, the most stifling and smoggiest day of the year. At 9 a.m., however, the sky was clear, the temperature just hitting 80 degrees. An idyllic California morning.

 

Almost 20 years later, radio executive Joe Gillespie says: “I remember that day as if it happened yesterday.” Two decades ago, Gillespie was news director at KSDO Radio. Today, he’s the station manager for WLAP in Lexington, Kentucky. “It was too perfect a day. There was no way you’d expect a PSA jet to fall out of the sky. I mean, you could see forever,” he says. Fall out of the sky is exactly what Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182 from Sacramento via Los Angeles did—after it collided with a single-engine Cessna some 2,600 feet above the Mid-City intersection of 38th Street and El Cajon Boulevard.

 

Pieces of the Cessna, with its two-man crew, crashed at 32nd and Polk streets in the heart of North Park, an eclectic mix of shopkeepers and working-class residents, a few miles from the San Diego Zoo. Ground zero for PSA’s 150,000-pound 727-214 was Dwight and Nile streets, just west of Interstate 805, only 3 nautical miles northeast of Lindbergh Field. Flight recorder data showed the collision happened at 1 minute, 47 seconds after 9. Flight 182’s impact with the ground was documented 3¼10ths of a second past 9:02. From resounding collision to fiery aftermath, the elapsed time was just 13 seconds.

 

Two hours after the worst of the horrific black-and-orange smoke cleared, PSA management and investigating officials reported that no one aboard had survived the passenger jet’s 300 mph plunge into the residential neighborhood. By noon, the world knew of the tragedy—the highest air disaster death toll ever in the United States. All 135 aboard the Boeing jetliner perished, as well as two in the Cessna and seven persons on the ground. Only a few bodies were even recognizable as human. Gary Jaus, a rookie cop at San Diego Police Academy, was one of 15 in his class given the somber duty of combing through the wreckage for anything that could be used to I.D. a victim. Today, Jaus is a sergeant in charge of community policing. “How much gore do you want me to tell you about?” he asks. “There were no faces on the bodies. There were no bodies to speak of—only pieces. One alley was filled with just arms, legs and feet. I worked at Clairemont Mortuary before I became a cop, so I was able to do my duty without getting sick. I was no stranger to dead bodies, but I wasn’t ready to see the torso of a stewardess slammed against a car.”

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