Steamboat Springs Research Paper

Steamboat Springs — January 11, 2009. A single-engine plane crashed one mile north of the runway at Yampa Valley Regional Airport, YVRA, on Sunday morning in heavy snow. The two passengers, William "Bill" Rooney Jr., 54, and his adult son William Patrick Rooney III, 26, father of a year-old son and a daughter expect next month, were killed. West Routt Fire Protection District Chief Bryan Rickman said the airplane, a Pilatus PC-12 fixed-wing, single-engine turboprop aircraft, took off from YVRA at about 9:40 a.m. en route to Chino or Orange County, California. "We never heard from it again," Rickman said. Routt County Sheriff 's Office Investigator Ken Klinger said the airplane took off west, and it is not clear how the plane ended up north of the runway. "It should not have been there, in all probability," he said. Klinger said he suspects the plane was attempting a return to YVRA, but there had been no radio contact indicating a problem. Airport Manager Dave Ruppel said the plane took off in low visibility Sunday morning. Just before the takeoff, visibility was reported as low as 3/4 of a mile and it was snowing heavily.

YVRA officials were contacted by air traffic controllers at the Denver Center when the airplane did not appear on radar.

I cannot get my head around that. One second I 'm a contented stay-home wife with the most handsome husband and three great, adult sons the world ever offered. The next, I am a widow. I hate that word, Bill, and it 's all your fault. No, not the accident. That was attributed to a freakish, twisting wind. It 's your fault, however, that I have a new title in life. I am no longer Mrs. Debi Rooney, wife, mother, grandmother. I 'm "that poor widow we know from church," or I 'm "the woman whose husband and son died in a plane crash." I do not want my life compared to the Book of Job, but I see the comparisons. I pray that like Job I never blame God; oh that would hurt me.