Blimp Crashes Into Building

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Manhattan, New York, July 4, 1993

A commercial blimp porpoising along above an urban scene of office towers, tenements and busy streets began to deflate and crash-landed on the roof of an apartment building on Manhattan's West Side yesterday in a spectacular Fourth of July mishap that left its two crew members injured and a neighborhood agape.

The cause was not immediately determined, though the pilot and Federal aviation officials said a piece of the tail assembly apparently broke off and punctured the nylon skin of the helium-filled airship Bigfoot, which bore the Pizza Hut logo and arrived in New York from Boston yesterday afternoon on a summerlong tour that was its maiden voyage around the nation.

As the 165-foot dirigible plowed onto the top of the seven-story building at 410 West 53d Street, between 9th and 10th Avenues, its gondola came to rest just inside the parapet and its body perched, perilously and surreally, with its nose on the rooftop and its tail jutting out high over the street.