Eugene man turns from fan into responder amid the chaos

Karl Krupicka’s voice was still shaken — four hours after he witnessed the worst thing he’s ever seen.

“Some of the stuff I saw I wouldn’t want to see in print,” the Eugene man said by cell phone Friday night from Reno, Nev. “It was that bad. If you can just imagine total devastation.”

Krupicka, along with his brother, Eric Krupicka, a longtime Register-Guard production department employee, and Eric Krupicka’s wife, Sandy, and their two boys, ages 7 and 8, arrived in Reno on Thursday night, having driven from Eugene so they could attend the final three days of the annual Reno National Championship Air Races.

Karl and Eric Krupicka have attended the show several times over the years. But it was the first trip ever for Eric Krupicka’s boys.

They spent Friday afternoon checking out the “beautiful planes,” said Karl Krupicka, who works at ATI Wah Chang, a titanium manufacturer in Albany, where he’s been trained as a first responder to attend to work-site accidents and medical calls.

About 4:30 p.m., all five family members were on top of their RV, about ¼-mile from the grandstands where spectators were watching the final race of the night, about six to eight planes flying in circles at speeds up to 400 mph.

“One of the planes pulled up and out, then called a May Day,” Eric Krupicka said. “Then it did a nose dive right down into the ground.” The grandstands blocked their view of the crash, he said. “But then you could see the plane parts come back up.”

The doomed vintage World War II plane’s 74-year-old pilot was killed along with at least two others on the ground.

In the ensuing chaos, race organizers called for any trained emergency personnel to come help, Karl Krupicka said. “It was just devastation as far as plane pieces everywhere,” he said.

There was nothing left resembling a plane whatsoever, he added.

Karl Krupicka did what he could, he said, helping load the scores of injured onto backboards to be rushed to area hospitals.

“The races are a lot of fun, and it’s just an unfortunate thing to have happened,” he said.