It was an unbelievable moment for many, seeing a police helicopter on top of a Cardiff house just off the A470 in Cardiff - not least for the family who lived in the Whitchurch home and the pilot and two police colleagues who stepped unhurt from the wreckage, just minutes after it had crashed.
Back in April 2000, the unsuspecting Patterson family were settling down in front of the television for the night when the terrifying event would ruin the home in which they had lived in for 48 years.
As the extraordinary event unfolded Diane Patterson stood in the kitchen with the house shaking around her and fuel spilling over her home. Speaking to WalesOnline back in 2006, Diane said: “The helicopter just sat on our house. It couldn’t have been staged better if I had planned it.”
Read More: The day two planes crashed in mid-air over Cardiff and one smashed into a hotel
In a split second, Diane and her husband Colin made a decision to run back into the house, which, police later said, saved their lives.
“I just stood in the kitchen where it was caving in on me, thinking ‘where’s the dog’s lead?’
“The police were screaming at me to get out.” Miraculously, the Pattersons, who have four sons, Mark, then aged 37, Paul, 35, Matthew, 33, and David, 30, and the three-man helicopter crew survived. Colin said: “I was at the bottom of the garden.
"The pilot was screaming at me to get ladders, so I ran around the side of the house.
“Matthew, our third son had run straight down the garden and jumped over the fence. We didn’t know where he was. They wouldn’t let us back in.”
With their home soaked in aviation fuel ruining decades of keepsakes, photographs and treasured mementoes, the family escaped with just the clothes they stood up in and spent the following nights in a nearby hotel.
“That was the worst thing; losing everything that was in the loft,” said Diane.
“I had kept all the children’s drawings from when they were in school and Christmas decorations they had made.”
It was only later they realised how close to tragedy they had come. Diane said: “We shouldn’t be here. It should have exploded. It should have caught fire. All the helicopter crashes I’ve heard about have exploded.”
Diane, spoke to WalesOnline again back in November 2013 after a helicopter crash in Glasgow brought everything back. Diane, who was then 71, said: “I can remember it quite vividly. It was 8.37pm on Good Friday in 2000 and two of my sons had come home for Easter.
“They were watching the football on television and there was a helicopter outside. It was flying quite low and I kept going out to watch. I remarked on how low it was, when suddenly, it went silent and just dropped out of the sky.”
Recalling the crash, which happened as the helicopter tracked a stolen BMW, she said: “In that first second, self-preservation kicked in. One of my sons ran down the garden. In hindsight, he could have been decapitated because the tiles from the roof were flying everywhere.”
She added: “I stood in the kitchen and the house shook around me. Fuel from the engine poured everywhere. We had the heating and the oven on, but amazingly there was no fire and no explosion. We were told afterwards that there should have been a big explosion, but it was obviously not our time to go.”
The emergency services arrived on the scene within minutes, after the pilot radioed for help in the air. Despite the shock, Colin, who was working as an insurance broker at the time, found a ladder and helped the crew down from the roof. Colin was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress after the incident and the couple were fearful every time they heard a helicopter overhead.
The next day the helicopter was recovered by the RAF aircraft recovery team. Crash investigators sifted through the wreckage of the helicopter at the scene and the remains were taken to the RAF St Athan airbase in the Vale of Glamorgan, before being taken to Farnborough for a more detailed examination.
An official report into the accident blamed it on the failure of two maintenance engineers to correctly fit a new part.
Despite the traumatic event, the Pattersons remained at their long-time home and it had to undergo extensive work because the crash had made it structurally unstable.
Six months and a day after the incident they moved back into the home they had lived in since 1965 and in our catch-up with Diane, back in 2013, she told us: "We did not want to move because we had lived there for so long, but everything inside had to be re-built.
“The carpets and the furniture had to go, because they were soaked in fuel and our possessions in the attic were destroyed. We lost hundreds of photographs and a lot of things from when our sons were little – things that had a lot of sentimental value.”
When the couple were able to return to the property in the autumn, they held a party for their friends and neighbours.
Diane added: “Everybody was very kind to us and they helped us through it. In situations like this, you realise how good neighbours and friends are.”
Read Next:
- 16 pictures of Cardiff's long-lost cinemas where you watched the biggest blockbusters as a kid
- Unearthed pictures of Cardiff show how much has changed since the '60s
- The small island in the Bristol Channel used by smugglers and illicit drinkers
- How Cardiff looked when it hosted the Commonwealth Games in 1958
- See more nostalgia stories from Wales Online
Love nostalgia? Have the best articles emailed to you for free with our nostalgia newsletter. Click here to see all the Wales Online newsletters.
