VIEW FROM ABOVE

By I.R. Hunthausen
Photo by Ross Mason

“I ’ve seen a lot of bad stuff,” says Detour Dan Beach. While giving commuters accurate and up-to-the minute traffic reports, KTAR’s flying traffic man has seen some pretty horrific accidents and had his share of hair-raising experiences while in the air.

“The hardest thing I ever saw was a DPS officer in his squad car on the U.S. 60 off to the right engulfed in flames and no one could get him out,” he says. “That still gives me goose bumps.”

While learning to cope with the downside of his job over the past 20 years, Beach has become the guiding voice for many Valley commuters. In 1991, Beach was an aspiring sportscaster, but tragedy took his career on its own detour. That year KTAR’s traffic man, Mike Nuetzman, was killed when his traffic helicopter crashed. The accident occurred on a Friday and, though the station’s staff was in shock, somebody had to assume the duties the following week. “That Monday some one had to go up,” Beach says.

At the time, Beach had virtually no traffic-reporting experience. After a bit of trial and error, he found his groove and everything fell into place.

Over the years there have been some close calls. Seventeen years ago he and his crew were covering a brush fire on the north side of South Mountain. While en route, the plane suddenly began losing altitude. Smoke was rising from the mountain as the aircraft descended. The cause was a downdraft, which was sucking Beach and his team toward the inferno. At the last minute, the pilot was able to turn around and maneuver away.

“All the way out we were descending so we only had about fifteen or twenty feet below us before we would have been on the mountainside,” he says. “That scared the bejeezus out of me.”