The Ohio Air National Guard is investigating what caused a malfunction that forced a pilot to drop two fuel tanks from 12,000 feet in the air over Iosco County and into Lake Huron. No injuries have been reported.
WCMU's News Director Rick Brewer spoke with reporter Teresa Homsi about the incident that happened Wednesday afternoon.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and length. Listen to the interview above.
Rick Brewer: Teresa, let's just start off with what exactly happened yesterday afternoon.
Teresa Homsi: Two F16 fighter jets were doing a training exercise in northern Michigan with the Ohio Air National Guard, and around 1:30 p.m., there was a malfunction on one of the planes.
According to the Ohio Guard, one of the external fuel tank started falling apart, so the pilot was forced to eject both to keep the plane balanced.
However, as the pilot was moving to a less populated area over Lake Huron to do this maneuver, some debris from the first tank fell into to the Baldwin Plaza parking lot in East Tawas.
No one was injured, but a few cars were hit with the shrapnel. Then the remainders of that first tank and the second tank were ejected over Lake Huron.
RB: What's the response been on the ground?
TH: I spoke with Iosco County sheriff, Scott Frank on Thursday morning. He said when this initially happened, the explosion was heard across town, and the local authorities shortly got a phone call involving an explosion from Baldwin Resort Road near Lake Huron.
But it took local first responders a while to really understand what was going on. They contacted the U.S. Coast Guard to see if maybe a plane had crashed or a pilot was ejected.
That's what initially everyone believed on the ground there. The Coast Guard came out, and they had local divers on standby to see if they needed to maybe go into the water for a rescue.
Frank told WCMU there was "zero communication" from the Ohio Air National Guard to local responders. He said it took over an hour and a dozen phone calls before they were able to get a hold of someone and actually confirm that it was these fuel tanks that had fallen — and not a plane or an ejected pilot.
Senior Master Sgt. Beth Holliker with the 180th Fighter Wing of the Ohio Air National Guard said the delay in communicating information to local authorities was "unfortunate" and thanked local responders for their work.
"We try to get a press release out to the areas impacted as soon as humanly possible," Holliker said. "My guess is the pilot's first priority was maintaining flights and making sure that everything was safe and then probably everything the chain reaction, once they were safely on the ground here, started."
The U.S. Coast Guard’s Tawas Station recovered remaining debris from the damaged fuel tank and the whole tank from Lake Huron. Officials from the USCG reported no signs of pollution, with no visible fuel sheen on the water.
An environmental cleanup team deployed equipment at the Baldwin parking lot to stop additional fuel from leaking into stormwater drains and contain the fuel in a nearby retention pond.
RB: Teresa, the plane initially sent a distress call to the Oscoda Airport, but ended up landing in Toledo. Do we know why that was the case?
TH: So this is a common question that residents are asking. That distress call was sent in the afternoon and then the plane ended up landing in Toledo at 2:10 p.m.
According to a statement from the sheriff's office, the Oscoda airport said they did not hear any other calls after the initial emergency declaration or know the outcome of the plane that made that call.
Holliker said that after ejecting the external fuel tanks, everything was likley stable on the plane, so they were able to make it to their base in Toledo, where the plane is now being inspected.
Holliker said if necessary, they might even send some fuel tanks back to the manufacturer to see if there was some sort of structural issue with them.
