Montrose – Levi Hawks’ small, red-brick house shook Monday morning from an explosion that sounded like dynamite.
A single-engine plane had smashed through his trees, clipping his roof and exploding in a fireball as it hit his semi- tractor parked in front of the house.
Two people in the four-seat Beechcraft Bonanza died in the fiery crash that sent a black cloud over this Western Slope town at 10 a.m. People on the ground in the quiet downtown neighborhood of South Ninth Street barely escaped injury.
Hawks and his wife, Susan, were about to go out to the truck when a phone call delayed them.
“The Lord was watching over us,” he said. “Ten minutes later and I would have been in that truck.”
The truck bore the brunt of the crash, saving lives, police said.
“The truck probably stopped the plane from hitting other houses,” said Montrose Police Department Cmdr. Gene Lillard. “There’s a good probability it would have hit the houses across the street.”
The area was marked by broken and scorched trees and the charred frame of Hawks’ Kenworth.
The plane had been doing “stop and gos,” landing, stopping and taking off in training maneuvers, at Montrose Regional Airport.
Airport spokesman Jeff Precup said he couldn’t confirm whether the plane, which was based at the Garfield County Airport in Rifle, was occupied by a student and a flight instructor. But the training maneuvers indicate that there was probably a student pilot aboard. The plane was probably circling around to do another training maneuver when it crashed.
Precup said the plane was in communication with Montrose airport officials between the first two “stop and gos,” but officials had not communicated with the plane right before the crash. “All indications are we didn’t know there was an issue until the crash,” he said.
Witnesses told police and firefighters that they didn’t hear the plane’s engine before it crashed. Others reported they had heard its engine stall as it flew over the downtown Montrose business district.
The wreckage of the blue-and- white plane was strewn across South Ninth Street, and the fuselage, with the front sheared off, sat near the semi where it had spun around after the impact.
After the crash, the Hawks and their two sons, ages 17 and 23, ran out a back door.
“I couldn’t believe how much fire there was,” Hawks said. “It was like putting your head in an oven door.”
Wenell Crawford was asleep in her small, green-shuttered house across the street when she was awakened by a loud bang followed by an ear-splitting explosion and smaller pops.
“There was so much fire and smoke. At first, I didn’t see the plane,” said Crawford, whose house was directly in the path of the crash. “I am so glad that truck was there. It would have been horrible.”
Montrose County Coroner Mark Young said officials they used dental records to identify the victims and were in the process of notifying next of kin.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators were scheduled arrive in Montrose on Monday night to investigate the crash.
The plane had recently been sold by Heartland Airplanes of Olathe, Kan., Precup said. The new owner of the plane was not yet listed in the Federal Aviation Administration database.
Staff writer Manny Gonzales contributed to this report.
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.