NEWS

Morristown surgeon back to work after plane crash

William Westhoven
@WWesthoven

Less than three months after surviving a fiery small-plane crash that claimed the life of the pilot, Morristown surgeon Carl Giordano is back on his feet, back to work and ready to share his narrow escape from death.

“I’ve actually started writing it all down,” said Giordano, a native of Morristown living in the New Vernon section of Harding.

The end of the story will be bittersweet at best since his friend and pilot, Joseph Milo, did not survive the crash on a clear, calm Sunday morning in Bethpage, New York. Milo was flying Giordano home to Morristown Municipal Airport from a weekend in the Hamptons, out of Westhampton Airport, in a Beechcraft C35 single-engine aircraft on Aug. 16 when Giordano heard  a pop about 10 minutes into the flight.

“We were flying at about 5,500 feet, westbound,” Giordano said. “The engine sputtered, and it caused the plane to drop. I’m not sure how many feet, but we knew the plane had lost altitude. I will tell you I was shaking a little bit, but it seemed as though the engine was still running, and he had control of the plane. I had a lot of confidence in him. But that shudder was definitely unusual.”

Milo, according to Giordano, immediately radioed air-traffic control and warned that he may need to “take it down.”

“After that moment, he and I never spoke another word,” Giordano said. “He just kind of lapsed into hyper-focused pilot mode.”

There were several airports in the area, and according to a preliminary report issued by the National Transportation Safety Board, Milo was first directed to Republic Airport in Farmingdale. When he told the controller he might not be able to make it there, he was directed to an airport in Bethpage that had been closed  but still had a landing strip.

Tragically, there was no longer a landing strip at the Bethpage site as the land had become an industrial site.

“We just couldn’t find the runway,” Giordano recalled. “We were staring out the window and just couldn’t find it.”

Giordano’s recollection of the crash is spotty, although he says he never lost consciousness as they crashed on a crossing of the Long Island Railroad.

“Everything happened very quickly,” Giordano said. “All of a sudden, boom, I’m crawling on the ground.”

Passers-by who helped Giordano escape the flaming wreckage said they saw him “come out of the plane” while it was still 10 to 20 feet above the ground.

“Seems the plane hit a pole and took the wing off on my right side, then it took my door off,” he said. “I had my hand on my seat belt thinking if it was a bumpy ride, I might have to get out quick, and I was waiting for my moment to release it. Once I think I unconsciously or subconsciously saw daylight, I think I must have released my belt and went right out the door. But apparently we were still off the ground.”

Still close to the debris, which was beginning to burn, he began to crawl away.

“I was on the ground, feeling my arms and thinking to myself, ‘I got out of this.’ I knew I had broken my jaw and it was bleeding, but I was thinking, ‘we got out of this.’ Then, I think, the plane quickly caught on fire, and the whole wreckage became just a heap of melted metal.”

Milo, however, did not survive the crash. No details of Milo’s cause of death were listed in the NTSB report, but Giordano said, “I’m almost sure he died on impact.”

“He was a good man, a really, really nice guy,” Giordano said of Milo, who had shuttled him several times between Long Island and Morristown Municipal Airport over the past two years. “He didn’t panic at all. He was calm and cool and stayed that way to the every end. It was unfortunate he didn’t make it. Thank God there was no one else in the plane.”

Giordano’s extensive injuries included a  broken jaw, a broken clavicle and broken ribs. He was brought to Nassau University Medical Center, where he underwent a six-hour surgery for a jaw fracture that the surgeon there told him was “the worst he’d seen in 36 years.”

Somehow, Giordano was still able to talk, reassuring his wife, Abbie, by phone before she arrived at the hospital and spent the night with him in ICU. She drove him home the next day after Giordano declined a helicopter ride to Morristown.

With his jaw wired shut, and further surgery needed on his clavicle, he focused on recovery for about six weeks before going back to work on a part-time basis. Monday will be his first full-day back as an orthopedic spine surgeon at Morristown Medical Center and with Atlantic Spine Specialists in Morristown.

Giordano said he’s itching to get back to his sporting passions, squash and golf, but needs another six to eight weeks of healing before he can get his swings back.

He says other than mourning the loss of a friendship cultivated during many enjoyable flights over New York City, he is not experiencing any post-trauma stress, something he attributes to his profession, where “nothing rattles us” in the surgical arena.

And he has started writing about the crash, and  it inspired him to reflect on his life, which he plans on getting back to as soon and completely as possible, with one possible exception.

“I don’t think I am going to fly in any small single-engine aircraft,” he said. “If nothing else, for my family, because this has been a terrible disruption to our lives.”

Staff Writer William Westhoven: 973-917-9242; wwesthoven@GannettNJ.com.

The National Transportation Safety Board report can be viewed at:

http://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/brief.aspx?ev_id=20150816X95657&key=1