Supervisor Adam Bowman was loading metal onto a truck at a scrapyard just south of the Louisville airport when he heard what he first assumed was a transformer explosion. Within seconds, he realized it was something far worse.
“I turned around and I see over the fence just a huge cloud of black smoke and just a fireball that was indescribable,” Bowman said. “I’m thinking this is a plane coming down.”
He was right. A UPS cargo plane had crashed during takeoff, triggering a devastating chain reaction that tore through Grade A Auto Parts & Recycling and caused explosions at nearby Kentucky Petroleum Recycling.
Bowman said he didn’t know whether to run or take cover, but instinct pushed him to dive between massive bales of aluminum and curl up as tightly as he could while explosions erupted around him.
The horror had only begun for him, his coworkers, and customers who had arrived to sell scrap metal at the 30-acre facility.
When Bowman got back on his feet and tried to escape, he heard someone calling for help. Through the thick smoke, he saw a man too injured to move, so severely burned that his clothes had been burned away.
“I told him, ‘Get on my back. We’re going to get up front. We’re going to get you help,’” Bowman told The Associated Press.
Chaos at the scrapyard
On the opposite side of the scrapyard, Joey Garber was reviewing emails in his office when the power cut out, the building shook, and a series of explosions followed.
The plane crashed around 5:15 p.m. on Nov. 4 after its left wing caught fire and an engine detached as it departed for Honolulu from UPS Worldport, the company’s global air hub in Louisville. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash, which dramatic video captured.
Garber said he ran outside and saw flames and thick smoke. After that, chaos erupted as people searched desperately for a way out.
Garber, 30, the chief operating officer and son of the business owner, said he watched two employees cling to each other as they crawled out of a fire. He saw another coworker and shouted for her to run toward him. Then another explosion tore through the scrapyard.
“The heat that came off that explosion was so hot that we all stopped moving,” he said. “I remember looking at my boots thinking to myself: ‘You’ve got to move your feet again. You can’t stay here. You’ve got to go.’”
Burned man rescued
Once Bowman felt the debris was no longer falling, he stood up to a nightmarish scene.
“Everything was on fire,” he said.
He tried to run toward a building, then turned back when another explosion hit. He called his wife and parents to tell them he was safe. When his father asked what happened, Bowman remembered answering, “I’m pretty sure a plane went down and I think everybody’s gone.”
Then he heard the man yelling for help.
“All I can think is this guy’s got a strength and will that he’s got to have some people he loves he’s trying to get to,” Bowman said.
Bowman, 44, carried the man on his back, tried to comfort him, and flagged down a coworker driving a pickup through the chaos. They lifted the injured man into the truck and drove until they found emergency workers.
Bowman asked his name and learned he was Matthew Sweets, 37.
Sweets, an electrician and father of two, died days later. He was one of the 14 people killed in the crash.
A question of rebuilding
More than a week later, Garber said he is amazed that so many people managed to survive.
Bowman becomes emotional while recalling what happened but downplays his bravery. He now wonders what will happen to the scorched scrapyard where he built a career over 15 years.
Sean Garber, the owner and CEO of Grade A, said the heart of the business was destroyed, and he isn’t sure if he will rebuild on the site.
“I’d like to say ‘yes,’ but I just simply don’t know,” he said Thursday.
He was on a business trip in Florida when he learned that his recycling operation—serving 200 to 300 customers a day—had been wiped out.
His chief financial officer called in a panic, saying the power was out and it felt like an earthquake. Then she said the scrap metal office had exploded. When she turned her phone to FaceTime, he heard explosions and saw a massive fireball.
He was left mourning the deaths of three employees — John Loucks, 52; Megan Washburn, 35; and Trinadette “Trina” Chavez, 37 — along with customers who died, including a man and his young granddaughter. Three pilots were also killed.
Sean Garber said he and his employees have experienced a wave of emotions since the crash — shock, grief, and now anger that such a tragedy happened at all.
Bowman said the Grade A team was like a family, spending as much time together as with their own loved ones. Then, in an instant, three of them were gone. Survivors are still trying to understand how the disaster occurred.
“I told the whole team that everyone that walked away, we have an obligation to our friends and our co-workers who didn’t to live our lives to the fullest,” Joey Garber said.
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