The Brookings Register
BROOKINGS COUNTY — A Thursday afternoon crash involving a crop-dusting plane northwest of White ended about as well as it could have: The aircraft’s pilot, Brookings resident Jeffrey …
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BROOKINGS COUNTY — A Thursday afternoon crash involving a crop-dusting plane northwest of White ended about as well as it could have: The aircraft’s pilot, Brookings resident Jeffrey Brunsen, was able to get away from the wreck with minor injuries.
The incident was reported at 3:57 p.m. and occurred on 474th Avenue near 198th Street, according to a Friday news release from the Brookings County Sheriff’s Office. The plane, a Thrush S2R which sustained an estimated $450,000 in damage, is owned by Brookings-based Wilde Air Service, Assistant Sheriff Scott Sebring wrote in the release.
“He was coming out of a field he was spraying and got into some ducks, had a bird strike, and he was trying to land the plane and basically where he was trying to land, it turned into slough,” Wilde Air Service dispatcher Brodie Glanzer told the Brookings Register in a telephone interview. “When it hit the slough, it went end-over-end one time and that’s how it ended up. He just crawled out, had some cuts and stuff, and gave us a call and said, ‘Hey, I just crashed.’ (Owner) Isaac (Wilde) hurried up and got out there, had 911 called and FAA called and all that stuff while we were on the way.”
Sebring wrote that Brunsen was taken by ambulance to Brookings Health System for treatment of his injuries, which Glanzer said consisted of minor cuts and bruises that needed some stitches. No damage to any of the fields was reported, Sebring added.
“It was literally just a freak accident,” Glanzer said. “They came out of nowhere. The crop-dusting planes in general — hitting ducks is a pretty frequent thing. I think a lot of times just kind of the way they fly and the altitude they’re flying at, they kind of act goofy. So they hit them quite a bit, but the odds of where this one hit his plane — to go get sucked into the engine — is pretty rare.”
In addition to the sheriff’s office, other responding agencies were Brookings Ambulance, the South Dakota Highway Patrol and the Brookings Fire Department.
— Contact Mondell Keck at mkeck@brookingsregister.com.
