When his sputtering airplane couldn’t make it back to the airport for an emergency landing, pilot Clifford Howell inadvertently chose the safest spot in Puyallup, Wash., to bring down his Cessna 182.
Just 20 feet short of the property line at the local airport, Thun Field, Howell’s plane crashed into a group of ADA-compliant portable restrooms in the yard of Honey Bucket, a Northwest Cascade company, then flipped on its back into a bark pile used to filter gases from stored septage.
By the time Gary Clarke made it from the Honey Bucket office to the back of the yard, Howell was walking away from the wreckage.
“Anywhere else, and he would have hit hard ground or something metal,’’ said Clarke, a superintendent for Flowhawks, the Honey Bucket pumping and drain cleaning subsidiary. “The ADA units broke his initial crash and then he flipped over onto the bark pile.
“Nobody was working in the area where the plane went down,’’ Clarke continued. “Replacing a few toilets is cheap and easy compared to losing a life. Or if he crashed into our fuel island, who knows what could have happened? He chose the best spot.’’
According to news accounts, Howell took off May 1 and was climbing at 150 feet when the engine quit. He was trying to glide back to the airport, but couldn’t make it.
Shortly after the crash, three news helicopters were on the scene and reporters converged on the Honey Bucket property to marvel at Howell’s lucky landing. Within hours, the story of how portable restrooms saved the pilot’s life made national headlines. News stories made light of portable restrooms cushioning the blow, but local officials weren’t joking about the crash.
“If he had made the runway, he would have landed a lot harder than he did by impacting with those (restrooms) and the wood pile,’’ Sgt. Mike Blair of the local sheriff’s department told Washington State media. “It probably saved his life, I would think.’’
Howell, 67, was alone in the plane and sustained only minor injuries, according to news accounts. Honey Bucket played a role in cleaning up the crash scene. A worker, operating a knuckleboom truck used to set septic tanks, picked up the plane and lifted it over a fence and onto airport property, then flipped it so it could be towed to a hangar, Clarke explained.
The crash damaged about a dozen Satellite Industries ADA restrooms. Workers will recycle as many of the parts as they can, Clarke said. The Honey Bucket property is 7.5 acres, and the area where the crash occurred is used for storing up to 500 restrooms. There’s usually about a dozen people working at Honey Bucket, but nobody was in that area at the time of the crash.
The bark pile where Howell’s plane came to rest is about 50 by 75 feet. Perforated pipes from a 100,000-gallon septage storage system run into the bark pile to dissipate fumes, Clarke explained.
