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A thundering boom startled thousands of people at Hill Air Force Base and beyond its gates Thursday as a fighter pilot dropped munitions and two external fuel tanks onto an uninhabited area of the sprawling military facility in response to an in-flight emergency.
A bomb destroyed a small, tin work shed near an area where ordnance is stored on the base's west side. It also damaged a nearby transformer and power lines, causing a basewide power outage. But base officials say no one was injured in the 3:50 p.m. incident, and the pilot landed safely. None of the stored ordnance, which is kept in underground bunkers, was damaged or destroyed.
Col. Scott Zobrist, commanding officer of the 388th Fighter Wing, said the pilot of
At a hastily arranged news conference two hours after the incident, Zobrist called the aviator "a highly experienced pilot who has practiced these kinds of things hundreds if not thousands of times."
Precision was key as the pilot dropped a 500-pound bomb and other munitions less than 2,500 feet to the east of Interstate 15. By Thursday evening, Hill officials said all the munitions and fuel tanks had been accounted for in a remote, uninhabited area of the base. Power was restored to the base by the evening and base gates had resumed normal operations, Hill officials stated.
The freeway was closed or slowed for hours as public safety officials from Hill and its surrounding communities attempted to account for the explosives.
Abandoning explosive armaments and fuel tanks is rare but part of the standard operating procedure for several potential emergencies, including onboard fires, engine burn-outs and landing gear malfunctions. Hill officials did not specify the nature of Thursday's emergency nor explain why the pilot was unable to make it to a less densely populated area.
That was the case in December, when another F-16 from Hill dropped its fuel tanks into the Great Salt Lake, about three miles north of Antelope Island, after the jet's sensors indicated a potential fire. A similar incident occurred last week when a Vermont Air National Guard F-16 jettisoned two fuel tanks into Lake Champlain after declaring an in-flight emergency.
Hill worker Drew Brown, who works on the base's west side not far from the explosion site, said he heard a loud "thud," which was immediately followed by the power outage. "At first, I thought maybe a truck had hit the building," he said. "You could definitely feel it."
Jessica Zepeda, who works near the base, said she heard the explosion and saw a dark gray plume of smoke rising from the west side of the base.
"My first thought was, 'Where are my mother and my brother?' because they work on that side of the base," said Zepeda. "Nothing good could come of that kind of smoke."
Zepeda said she soon made contact with her family members, who asked her to find out about the incident and report back to them because they were without power on base and didn't know what was going on. Hill's public affairs representatives scrawled out news releases with paper and pen because they were unable to power up their computers.
Tribune reporter Jason Bergreen contributed to this report.
