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| Saturday, November 13, 2004 |
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Sad endings 
| | Some of you may recall that we lost our friend Susan Camusi a little over a year ago. She died after cosmetic surgery performed by Dr. John Padilla, here in Santa Barbara. While Susan's friends, I am sure, will always regard her death as a preventable after-effect of her surgery (the coroner cleared the doctor), there's little doubt that John Padilla was a good guy, whose good works were many. (That's him holding a baby in the picture on the right, about halfway down this page.) |
| | The victims of a fiery plane crash Wednesday night in the mountains north of Santa Barbara have been identified, and as believed, plastic surgeon John Padilla was among them, according to the county Sheriff's Department Coroner's Office. |
| | The other two bodies recovered from the plane's wreckage were identified as Ian Coulling, 24, and Stefanie Canright, 27. All were from Santa Barbara.... |
| | Officials said Dr. Padilla's New Piper Saratoga II TC failed to clear Big Pine Mountain and hit several trees atop the peak before crashing into a brushy ravine more than 500 feet below. |
| | Dr. Padilla, who is believed to have been at the controls of his 3-month-old plane Wednesday night, left Bakersfield at 9:36 p.m., aviation officials said. No one aboard filed a flight plan, which was not required. |
| | The trip was conducted under "visual flight rules" meaning visibility was considered good. Weather in the Santa Barbara-area mountains at the time of the crash was cloudy, according to the National Weather Service office in Oxnard. |
| | Flying at night over mountainous terrain can be very dangerous if a pilot is depending on sight rather than instruments, said Jack Gotcher, director of operations at Meadows Field Airport in Bakersfield. |
| | Big Pine Mountain is 6490 feet high. The FAA's Los Angeles sectional chart (a detailed map for pilots) shows 7200 feet as a floor for flying over the region (the number being slightly higher than the highest thing in the region). The crash location is a good bit north of where a pilot would want to begin a VFR approach, I would think (I'm not a pilot, but I'm somewhat familiar with the rules). And a VFR pilot (as opposed to an IFR pilot, who is qualified to fly under Instrument Flight Rules) would also, I would think, not want to be flying at night over mountains in any case. Or at night, at all. |
| | What's more, these mountains are often shrouded in clouds, especially this time of year. In fact I noticed the cloud cover on the whole ridge when I was driving down through the Santa Ynez valley the afternoon following crash. The picture above is one I took during that drive. I learned about the accident after I got home. |
| | Dr. Padilla leaves a wife and two small children. He and Susan were both 50 when they died. |
| | [Note: I took down the pointers that were in this paragraph, since the traffic has put an unintended burden on the site, and the author took the posts down. My apologies.] |
| | My sympathies to all the victims' relatives and friends. |
Dude, don't be so, like, harsh
| | Dave hates L.A. He's not alone. Hating L.A. is a Bay Area tradition, even though it's not reciprocated. L.A. folks are often surprised to find there's some kind of war going on. They'll be all like, You hate L.A.? Really? Dude, like, y'know... why? |
| | Fran Liebowitz calls L.A. "a large citylike area surrounding the Beverly Hills Hilton." Which is true, but also misses the points, which are many. Such as: the largest collection of ex-pat populations in the world, resulting in an amazing variety of outstanding ethic foods from everywhere. |
| | Anyway, I love L.A. It is, not coincidentally, the hometown of my wife, whose birthday (Happy, Baby!) is today. One of the reasons we're together is that I was one of the few guys she met from out of down who didn't hate it. |
| | Want to learn to love L.A.? Read Tony Pierce. Reading Moxie, Sean, Ken and Matt help too. (Shoot, read 'em anyway.) Plus many others I'm insulting by not including here. I've got Birthday Matters to attend to so I'm out of blog time. See ya later. |
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