1933 — March 25, Varney Speed (Air) Lines crash into houses (10), San Leandro, CA– 13
Compiled by Wayne Blanchard; last edit 1-4-2025 for upload to: http://www.usdeadlyevents.com/
–13 Blanchard note:
We conducted a newspaper archives search through the first week of April and found no report of a 14th death or of any critically injured person. All reporting after the death of the 13th victim notes 13 deaths. The two sources noting 14 provide no way to confirm their reporting of 14 deaths. We suspect this number was based on an early day-after report when fire-fighters were still combing through debris.
–14 Aviation Safety Network. Varney Speed Lines crash into houses, San Leandro, CA.[1]
–14 Notable California Aviation Disasters. The 1930s.
–13 Oakland Tribune, CA. “13th Plane Crash Victim Dies From Burns…” 3-27-1933, p. 1.
–10 On the ground
— 3 Pilot and two passengers
–13 Sweeny. Report to the Civil Aeronautics Board of a Study of Proposed Aviation…, 1941, p. 18.[2]
Narrative Information
Aviation Safety Network. Varney Speed Lines crash into houses, San Leandro, CA:
“Date: Saturday 25 March 1933
“Type: Lockheed Orion 9
“Owner/operator: Varney Speed Lines
“Registration: NC12226
“MSN: 184
“Fatalities: 3 / Occupants: 3
“Other fatalities: 11
“Aircraft damage: Destroyed
“Location: San Leandro, CA – USA
“Phase: Approach
“Nature: Passenger
“Departure airport: Burbank, CA
“Destination airport: Oakland, CA
“Narrative: Crashed into residential area in poor weather conditions.”
Notable California Aviation Disasters:
“Date / Time: Saturday, March 25, 1933 / Time: 8:07 p.m.
Operator / Flight No.: Varney Speed Lines / Flight No. unknown
Location:San Leandro, Calif.
Fatalities: 14 — all 3 aboard the Lockheed Orion; 11 persons on the ground.
“Details and Probable Cause: En route from Burbank’s United Airport to the San Francisco Bay Airdrome at Alameda, the single-engine Lockheed Orion 9 (NC12226) aircraft was carrying a lone pilot and two passengers. While flying on the southeastern side of San Francisco Bay near Hayward in heavy rain, the Varney Speed Lines monoplane descended out of a low cloud ceiling and sliced through the tops of two houses, smashed into a third, and exploded.
“The crash and ensuing firestorm killed all three occupants of the airplane and 11 people on the ground. Among those killed were all six members of the Joseph Arisa family, including both parents and four children ranging in age from 10 years to 18 months, whose home was the aircraft’s main impact point.
“Investigators determined that the crash was the result of “an unusual and unforeseen condition of the weather that developed its intensity in the immediate locality of the accident.” Weather reports showed that within a time period of 50 minutes, after the plane had departed Burbank, the cloud ceiling in the San Leandro area dropped from 2,000 to 300 feet….
“Undaunted, Varney continued operations and, within five years of the airline’s 1933 San Leandro crash, would evolve into Continental Airlines under the new leadership of pilot Robert F. Six.” (Notable California Aviation Disasters. The 1930s.)
Newspapers
March 26, Oakland Tribune: “Twelve persons were killed, several injured and two were missing when a Varney passenger plane, inbound from Los Angeles, exploded in the air at Santa Monica Avenue and One Hundred Forty-Fourth Avenue at 8:10 last night, plunged through the roof of a home and started a blaze which destroyed three dwellings. Occupants of the three homes were cremated inside. When the gasoline tank tore apart, fragments of the ship were scattered for hundreds of feet. The propeller flew into a tree, and other pieces of the plane were ripped into small pieces. Terror-stricken residents of the neighborhood dashed into the street when the flaming ship struck.
“San Leandro firemen succeeded in preventing spread of a fire which threatened to demolish a congested group of residences. Most of the dead, trapped in the blazing structures, had not been recovered at a late hour last night.
“The pilot of the ship was Noel B. Evans of 736 Lincoln Avenue, Alameda. He, with two passengers, identified as Herman Brown of Hollywood, and Miss La Vele Miller of Los Angeles, perished in the wreckage.
“From Los Angeles came the information that when Evans left with his passengers the weather was ‘muggy’ and threatening rain.
“The missing persons are the wife and child of Joe Ricca, who is in the hospital.
“Witnesses declared that long before the explosion of the ship’s gasoline tank shook they homes, they heard the sound of an airplane zooming overhead, as though seeking a landing.
“Other witnesses were positive in their belief that the motor of the plane had been functioning perfectly before the sudden explosion, and it was a question whether the ship exploded before striking one of the homes or whether the blast occurred after the crash.
“The ship crashed first on the roof of the home of George Jordan, where Jordan and his family were sleeping. Bursting into flames, the roof cast showers of sparks onto the tops of adjoining homes. Jordan and his family managed to escape. But before Tony Serrano, the adjoining resident and his wife, family and friends, could escape, they were enveloped in the flaming wreckage of their homes.
“For four miles away the shock of the explosion was felt by those seated in their homes. Screams of women blended with the shouts of men as all fought to reach the streets….Walls of the homes collapsed, preventing escape of the occupants….”
“Here’s List of Victims.
Noel B. ‘Jack’ Evans, pilot, 736 Lincoln Avenue, Alameda.
…Herman Brown, 1051 North Orlando, Hollywood [passenger]
Miss La Vele Miller, 664 North Van Ness Avenue, Los Angles [passenger]
Mrs. Joe Arisa,
Her four children, Juanita, 1½; Michael, 4; Joe, 6, Anna, 10.
Tony Serrano, 20.
Joe Serrano, his brother, 18.
Flores Fuentes, 17, 1321 115th Avenue.
George Jeanot, 18.”
(Oakland Tribune, CA. “Plane Hits 3 Homes Here, 12 Die.” 3-26-1933, p. 1.)
March 27, Oakland Tribune: “With the death toll increased to 13, county, federal and company officials today continued their independent investigations of the worst airplane disaster in the history of Northern California, which occurred Saturday night when a transport plane with two passengers and pilot crashed into a home near San Leandro and exploded. Joseph Arisa, whose wife and four children perished in their blazing home, died from third degree burns last night at the Fairmount Hospital….
“Col. E. E. Mouton, supervising inspector of aeronautics for the department of commerce, said his investigation had established that there was no motor failure and that a ‘wind switch line’ caused when the wind changes its direction, had resulted in a localized squall into which the plane flew. A similar theory was advanced by Franklin Rose, president of the Varney Speed lines, who declared weather reports over the entire Los Angeles-Oakland route had been favorable….
“Arisa’s death completed the extermination of his family in the disaster which wrecked and burned his home at 1205 One Hundred Forty-fourth Avenue, the home of Joseph Jordan, next door and a shed at the rear of the Arisa home. All of the victims, save Arisa, were so terribly burned as to make identification almost impossible….
“The chronological story of the crash, as reconstructed from the investigation conducted by Deputy Sheriffs Douglas Webb and Harry Adams, and Inspectors Harry Piper and George Henningsen, of District Attorney Earl Warren’s office, opens with reports of a low-flying plane passing over the Fairmount Hospital. In a driving rainstorm the speeding ship swung low over the roofs of homes in the Hayward-San Leandro area. Its wheels struck in a rhubarb patch at the rear of the two burned homes and then the pilot, apparently aware of the impending crash, attempted to zoom the ship over the buildings in his path. The plane crashed into a shed and tree at the rear of the Jordan home at 1209 One Hundred Forty-fourth Avenue, and then plunged into the rear of the Arisa house, where it exploded with such force that the heavy 425 horsepower motor was thrown more than 100 feet into a nearby orchard. The blast shattered the Arisa home and showered blazing gasoline through it and over the Jordan house. Both burned within a few minutes.” (Oakland Tribune, CA. “13th Plane Crash Victim Dies From Burns; Storm Is Blamed in Fatal Accident.” 3-27-1933, p. 1.)
April 1, UP: “By United Press. Oakland, April 1. – ‘Sudden extremely unfavorable local weather conditions after dark’ were blamed in a report of a coroner’s jury today for the crash of a Varney Speed Line plane last Saturday night in which 13 persons lost their lives. The jurors expressed the opinion that the accident could possibly have been averted had the liner carried two-way radio equipment. The report recommended that all regularly scheduled passenger planes be forced to carry such equipment. The foreman of the jury was Capt. William Fillmore, a pilot.” (United Press. “Plane Crash Laid To Weather Change.” Berkeley Daily Gazette, CA. 4-1-1933, p. 2.)
Sources
Aviation Safety Network, Flight Safety Foundation. Database, 1933. Varney Speed Lines crash into houses, San Leandro, CA, 25 March 1933. Accessed 1-4-2025 at: https://asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase/34179
Notable California Aviation Disasters. “The 1930s.” Oct 23, 2008 update. Accessed 2-21-2009 at: http://www.jaydeebee1.com/crash30s.html (No longer active.)
Oakland Tribune, CA. “13th Plane Crash Victim Dies From Burns; Storm Is Blamed in Fatal Accident.” 3-27-1933, p. 1. Accessed 1-4-2025 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/oakland-tribune-mar-27-1933-p-1/
Oakland Tribune, CA. “Plane Hits 3 Homes Here, 12 Die.” 3-26-1933, p. 1. Accessed 1-4-2025 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/oakland-tribune-mar-26-1933-p-21/
Sweeny, Edw. C. Report to the Civil Aeronautics Board of a Study of Proposed Aviation Liability Legislation. 6-1-1941. Accessed 1-4-2024 at: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Report_to_the_Civil_Aeronautics_Board_of/-Y9QAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=civil+aeronautics+board+report+varney+speed+lines+crash+san+leandro+ca+%22march+25+1933%22&pg=PA18&printsec=frontcover
United Press. “Plane Crash Laid To Weather Change.” Berkeley Daily Gazette, CA. 4-1-1933, p. 2. Accessed 1-4-2025 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/berkeley-daily-gazette-apr-01-1933-p-2/
[1] Cites a Gendisasters.com website that is no longer operable.
[2] To be more precise, this section of the report which is focused on on-ground fatalities, notes that “an intrastate airling4r ran into a local rain squall, crashed into a frame house, and exploded, burning two small houses and a barn, with fatal injuries to their ten occupants.” We add the pilot and two passengers to derive 13 deaths.