A plane crashed into her house. Columbia woman escaped fiery aftermath
As Rebecca Munnerlyn sat at her dining room table Wednesday morning, her house began to vibrate and shake, causing the Rosewood resident to scramble from the table in alarm.
Then, before she had much time to look around, she heard explosions and her kitchen ceiling fell in, splattering debris everywhere. Flames began to lick at the deck and the ceiling of the neat bungalow on Kennedy Street.
“I dialed 911 and started screaming into the phone and just said: ‘I think a plane has hit my house,’ ‘’ Munnerlyn said. “I knew immediately what it was.’’
Her assessment was right.
A small plane, apparently on its way to the nearby Jim Hamilton-L.B. Owens Airport, crashed into her house as fog shrouded the area about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, bringing federal investigators to Rosewood. The Richland County coroner was at the scene, but officials had not announced the recovery of a body as of Wednesday afternoon. No information was provided on the plane’s pilot.
Neighbors described seeing fire shoot from the roof of Munnerlyn’s home after the plane whizzed low over the community. Many said they heard booms, apparently from the impact into the house, causing immediate worry that its occupants would be hurt.
“I just walked out with my neighbor and we were just looking at each other wondering, and then we saw our other neighbor’s house, and it was in a fireball,’’ said Blake Craig, a senior at Dreher High School.
Munnerlyn, a hospital public relations employee who lives alone with three cats, raced from room to room, looking for the animals, refusing to leave until she could whisk her pets from danger.
A neighbor arrived quickly and helped her retrieve the cats before she ran from the home and crossed the street to safety.
She and her pets survived without a scratch, but a reflective Munnerlyn said they were fortunate. It’s always been in the back of her mind that a plane from Owens Field might crash in Rosewood one day, but it was never an overarching concern — until Wednesday.
“I always dismissed the thought of a modern plane’’ crashing, she said. “Occasionally, you look up from your yard and somebody gets off the flight path, you think ‘Man, they shouldn’t do that. But hopefully, you think, the airport took note of that and scolded them.
“But today was our day.’’
Munnerlyn was unsure Wednesday whether she would be able to stay in her house overnight, but the fire was extinguished quickly after the crash, and the building remained standing.
She spent much of Wednesday talking with the Columbia Fire Department and the Federal Aviation Administration, which had investigators on the scene, as well as worried neighbors.
The next step will be to talk with her insurance agent about repairs to the house, she said.
For now, she’s likely to stay with her mother, who lives across the street.
“I just hope that this is the one event with the slimmest chance of ever happening again, that it will hold me over for 100 years,’’ she said with a grim chuckle. “I hope I didn’t use up all my luck.’’
This story was originally published January 13, 2021 at 3:03 PM.
