Runaway tire interrupts service at Palmer airport

PALMER — A truck-sized tire that fell off of a cargo plane about 8 p.m., Thursday at the Palmer Airport temporarily disrupting aerial firefighting efforts, but injured no one.

The rear tire came off the DC-6 cargo plane, and eventually ended up in a pond at the adjacent Palmer Golf Course, according to golf course director George Collum.

“It went through the golf course fence,” he said. “It kind of tore the chain link off the fence. It didn’t damage the structure of the fence. And then it skipped and bounced across the third and 18th fairways and ended up in one of our ponds.”

Palmer city manager Joe Hannan said officials closed down the airport for about two hours to remove some debris associated with the tire.

The golf course and the airport’s proximity doesn’t frequently interrupt play on the course, though there was at least startled golfer when the tire “played through,” Hannan said.

“It came through and passed quite close to a golfer,” he said.

A sky diver from a business operating out of the airport once landed on the course, and in January, a single-engine plane clipped a power line on approach, forcing an abrupt landing and disabling power to numerous customers in the nearby Springer Loop system.

“It’s not common, but it happens every few years,” Collum said.

In all, the tire roamed almost 600 yards before stopping in the pond, he said. Company officials had retrieved the runaway wheel Friday morning.

“I think if the water hadn’t been there, it would have kept going,” he said. “People thought it made a pretty good splash in the pond.”

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.