Owner of House Destroyed in Plane Crash Calls City Action a Disaster : Santa Paula: New zoning laws won’t let him rebuild, but the government has no money to pay him for property. He says insurance offers are too low.

Joe Garcia knows about disasters, bureaucrats and insurance companies. And the 73-year-old retired carpenter has nothing good to say about any of them.

In the 18 months since an airplane dropped out of the sky and destroyed one of his modest houses near Santa Paula Airport, Garcia said he has watched insurance companies wiggle out of responsibilities and city bureaucrats adopt rules that forbid him from rebuilding.

City leaders say they want to buy his house and all of his neighbors’ houses too for a newly designated safety zone around the airport. But there’s a catch. The city has no money.

So a house Garcia owns and a neighboring house remain blackened, hollow shells, appearing the same as they did when firefighters put out the blaze that killed the pilot of the downed plane in August, 1992.

Garcia, who lives next to the two burned-out buildings in the home he built with his wife, said he’s becoming desperate.

“I’m about fed up and I don’t know what I’ll do next,” he said recently while walking through one of the ruined structures.

He said the stress has him smoking and cursing more than he did when he was a soldier in North Africa during World War II. He’s gone so far as to say that it would have been better if he had died in the fiery Aug. 27 crash “just to be over with this mess.”

Nearly 18 months ago, a plane headed for the airport was clipped by another plane, lost control and plowed into the two houses at Santa Clara and Oak streets on the south side of Santa Paula. The plane burst into flames and burned the house owned by Garcia and a house owned by Rafael Rodriguez.

Garcia said he was offered $49,000 by the insurance company representing the pilot, the airport and the company that owned the airplane. The sum, an insurance adjuster assured him, should cover his destroyed house and emotional stress he has suffered.

“What am I going to do with their $49,000?” Garcia said. “You can’t even buy an outhouse with that.”

Even if Garcia receives enough money to rebuild, the city has forbidden Garcia and Rodriguez from so much as erecting a wall in the neighborhood.

In September, the Santa Paula City Council decided to prohibit construction in a newly established safety zone around the airport, stopping Garcia’s plans to redo the gutted house.

After the vote, city leaders said they were willing to buy Garcia’s property, but the cash-strapped city has no money for the purchase. More than a year ago, the city applied for a state grant to buy both properties, but the grant has yet to be approved.

“It’s been 18 months, and they haven’t produced a damn thing. They all make it seem like it was our fault, like our house jumped up into the sky and hit that plane,” Garcia said.

Garcia has lived next to the airport since 1948. He said he is convinced that the insurance companies are holding out, waiting for him to die.

“I got that solved. I’m gonna give my sons power of attorney so if I die, they can take the damn thing over,” he said, lighting his second cigarette in less than five minutes.

Garcia is grateful that neither his son nor anyone else in the house next door was injured in the crash. His 48-year-old son Daniel was renting the house at the time. Daniel Garcia was watching television with his wife, son and son’s girlfriend when the plane crashed through the roof and caved in the far side of the house.

After decades of ignoring the threat from above, Joe Garcia said he now finds himself worried about living next to an airport with no control tower.

“I still get nervous when I hear planes landing,” he said.

Rodriguez was renting the other burned house to Jose Perez and his family. Perez was working in the yard and his two sons were in the house playing when the plane hit. Gas from the planes fuselage ignited both houses, but the families escaped unharmed.

Now they are all suing. Rodriguez, the Garcia family and the Perez family have joined a lawsuit demanding more than $5 million in damages from the city, the airport, the two airplane companies that owned the planes involved in the crash and the insurance companies representing the pilots.

The Garcias are asking for enough money to replace their destroyed home and lost belongings. They are also asking for compensation for emotional distress, as is Jose Perez and his family. Rodriguez said he wants enough money to buy a comparable house elsewhere, out of the flight path.

Part of the stress claim focuses on those who witnessed the pilot trapped in the cockpit burn to death.

Daniel Garcia said he was within a few feet of reaching the pilot before the plane caught fire.

“He was alive,” Daniel Garcia said. “I saw him. He was looking at me yelling and then it just burst into flames. I can still see his face. He died a horrible death. I wonder, if we were able to save him, if all this would have happened.”

He said he is haunted by nightmares of the accident. His lawyers are asking for $2.5 million for his emotional distress.

When Joe Garcia heard the crash, he ran over to help his son and his family. He was standing behind Daniel when the plane burst into flames. While his son started spraying the fire with a garden hose, Joe Garcia grabbed a downed power line that had fallen near his son.

“I wish it had electrocuted me just so I wouldn’t have had to go through all this,” Joe Garcia said.

Garcia’s lawyers are asking for $300,000 for emotional distress and another $187,000 to replace the home that he owned and depended upon for rental income.

Lawyers defending the insurance companies said the claims by the Garcia family, Perez family and Rodriguez have no basis in law. They have offered to repay the value of the houses--assessed at roughly $20,000 each--and no more than $1,000 for emotional distress, one attorney said.

“We’re hoping for an early and fair resolution,” said Mitch Green, a Santa Monica-based attorney representing insurance companies of the pilot killed in the crash and the owner of the plane. Green declined further comment on the lawsuit, scheduled for trial in May.

“Their attitude is mind-boggling to me,” said John Brown, an Oxnard attorney representing the Garcias. “I don’t mean to sound emotional, but they’re trying to bury these people in paper. They’re treating them shamefully, and they want to string the case along because Joe and Mr. Rodriguez are both over 70.”