Reply #60: Here's another interesting tidbit - Consultants warned the city about this in 1979 [View All]

[slackmaster]

...The F/A-18D missed University City High School by a quarter-mile. In 1979, a defense researcher warned in a report against building the school or houses too close to the end of the Miramar runway. Many residents fought construction of the school for 17 years because of safety and environmental issues, but the school's backers prevailed, and University City High opened in 1981.

“A substantial threat of a catastrophic accident exists in the community west of Miramar,” said Jerry Kopecek, the study's author, who was then a vice president for the Navy consultant Science Applications Inc. The company is now known as SAIC.

Don Yoon, now 37, and Youngmi Lee, 36, were married four years ago.
Kopecek, now retired, said he looked at half a century of data showing that most crashes occurred within two miles of the end of a runway.

The predictions of long-ago consultants and activists meant little to Don Yoon yesterday as he grieved for his family....

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20081210/news_1n10jet.html

I was one of the voices opposed to the construction of University City High School at the time. Sometimes feeling vindicated sucks as badly as being proved wrong.