`94 AIR TANKER CRASH SITE REVISITED CONNECTION SOUGHT WITH CRASH EARLIER THIS YEAR.

Byline: Staff and Wire Services

PEARBLOSSOM - On a rugged ridge in the San Gabriel Mountains lies the debris of a firefighting air tanker that crashed more than eight years ago - twisted pieces of metal that might hold the answer to the mystery of what caused the plane to carry three crew members to their deaths.

A federal safety investigator says it's time to return to that remote site to help set the record straight on why aging ex-military planes on contract to fight fires for the Forest Service keep dropping from the sky.

George Petterson, an air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, contends there are strong similarities between the crash in 1994 and one that killed three aerial firefighters in the Sierra Nevada in June.

``It is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack,'' Petterson admitted. But the answer, he said, ``is probably there.''

The NTSB concluded six years ago that a fuel leak likely led to an explosion, causing the wings to break off the C-130A that slammed into the north face of Pleasant View Ridge south of Pearblossom on Aug. 13, 1994.

But an independent review by a former NTSB investigator challenged that finding in 1997 and suggested structural failure of the wing might have caused the crash. The plane had been flying from Hemet in Riverside County to a fire in the Tehachapi Mountains.

Like the C-130A crash this summer in the Sierra Nevada near Walker, Calif., the wings separated from the fuselage before the tanker rolled and pitched to the ground. The most recent tragedy was caught on videotape by a Reno television crew.

The NTSB has not completed its report on the probable cause of the June crash. But Petterson said it will show a contributing factor was aging metal in the wings.

``We found a lot of fatigue cracks, two of which had come together as a 12-inch plus crack,'' he said.

Petterson said the discovery prompted him to enlist the help of a Los Angeles County sheriff's helicopter in October to return to the site of the 1994 crash. From the ridge at an altitude of 6,500 feet, he rappelled 900 feet down Pechner Canyon and recovered a single piece of wing.

``It was a long shot, but it paid off,'' said Petterson, who has been investigating crash sites for more than 30 years.

``I found the point where it broke off like the Walker plane, shipped it to Washington for testing and, bingo, we found some fatigue cracking,'' he told The Associated Press.

Petterson said he wants the Forest Service or another federal agency to provide the $20,000 he estimates it will take to recover enough of the debris at the 1994 crash site to learn if wing cracks were to blame.

Had that determination been made at the time, subsequent crashes like this summer's might have been averted.

``I figure it would take five guys camped on the mountain on site for a week to recover all the bits and pieces, bag them and airlift that down just to recreate the bottom wing,'' he said.

``It's quite a big task,'' Petterson said. ``But I've already done step one.

``I think now, given what we have found, the (transportation safety) board might want to cover themselves, bite the bullet and do a rewrite of the 1994 report to find out if the same thing happened at Pearblossom.''

His plea comes two weeks after a blue ribbon panel appointed by Forest Service chief Dale Bosworth following two fatal air tanker crashes this summer - the other a PB4Y-2 in Colorado - unveiled a report highly critical of the maintenance and safety record of the agency's firefighting fleet.

The agency responded by permanently grounding all 11 of its C-130As and PB4Y-2s - about one-fourth of the fleet - and temporarily grounding the rest until their airworthiness can be ensured.

Since 1992, there have been seven air tanker accidents and 15 fatalities.

Tony Kern, the Forest Service's national aviation director, said he was under the impression the NTSB already was reopening the investigation of the 1994 crash. He said he was not aware of any request to help fund the effort, but likely would support it if the NTSB thought it was necessary.

``My opinion is the NTSB is the finest investigator of aviation safety in the world and that if they think they didn't get it right, they will go back and do that,'' Kern said Thursday.

NTSB spokeswoman Lauren Peduzzi confirmed the board has ``re-examined portions of the center wing'' that Petterson recovered but said there's been no decision on whether to send a crew to the site again as he suggests.

``I don't think we are talking about reopening the investigation. What we have done is re-examine portions of the wing to see what additional information we could extract,'' she said from Washington.

The NTSB's probe of the 1994 accident was its first ever of a Forest Service firefighting plane under new authority Congress granted in the early 1990s. Previously, the Forest Service had investigated its own crashes.

The NTSB ruled in 1996 the explosion probably was caused by an electrical short or a hot engine surface igniting leaking fuel. In the original probe, investigators removed only the top wing skins from the crash site for testing, Petterson said.

The Forest Service suggested initially that a lightning strike caused the explosion, but tests later disproved that theory, Petterson said.

Several witnesses to the 1994 crash reported the wings broke after the explosion. And Petterson said the same sequence likely would have been suspected in the crash this summer if not for the videotape that clearly shows the wings breaking first, before the ensuing fire.

``The Pearblossom plane shed some top wing skins like the Walker plane did,'' he said.

``I think there's a good possibility that with the Pearblossom plane, the wing broke first and then the fire was later,'' Petterson said.

``I don't know why no one really looked at the wing at the time. I don't know why they didn't pursue it.''