LOUISVILLE, Ky. (LEX 18) — After a UPS cargo plane crashed in Louisville Tuesday, resident David Spiesberger described what he witnessed.
"I could see the smoke for a long time," Spiesberger said.
He described looking out his window shortly after the crash occurred. Moments later, he began to piece together what had happened.
"I said I guess it must've been an airplane because I wasn't sure what it was at first," Spiesberger said.
Spiesberger's home falls within the area where authorities initially issued a shelter-in-place order spanning five miles from the crash site. Residents were ordered to shut off any air intake systems as a precautionary measure.
Despite the order, Spiesberger said he felt safe enough to step outside.
"I knew it was far enough away and I just kept going out on the porch standing on the porch and looking up at the sky," Spiesberger said.
The shelter-in-place order was later reduced to a quarter-mile radius of the Grade Lane area, near Louisville's hazardous waste drop-off location just south of the airport. From Spiesberger's perspective, the crash could have been much worse.
"Where it is over there it's a wonder it didn't take out more buildings than what it did," Spiesberger said.
A University of Louisville professor of medicine and nvironmental health expert Aruni Bhatnagar assessed the health impact on those living close to the crash site.
"Usually these effects are short term, changes in blood pressure, asthma, headaches, nausea," Bhatnager said.
