PORTLAND, Ore. ( KOIN ) — Sunday marks one year since an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 had its door plug blown out in midair on Jan. 5, 2024 on its trip from PDX to Ontario, California.
That same door plug plunged thousands of feet and landed in a tree in a Portland science teacher’s backyard in the West Haven neighborhood.
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Bob Sauer, the now-retired teacher, recounted the following days when people were searching all over Portland to find the missing piece of evidence. And had it not been for a call from a friend, he may not have found it at all.
“I thought, ‘Well, somebody’s sure to find it.’ So I didn’t look and I didn’t look and I didn’t look, and people were not finding it,” Sauer recalled. “And eventually, a friend of mine called and said, ‘Maybe you should check your backyard, because they think it fell somewhere in this neighborhood.’ And finally, on Sunday evening, I went out and looked, and there it was in the backyard.”
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He continued, “My heart beat a bit faster when I saw that. I knew immediately what it was. It was pretty recognizable as the door plug, but it was incredible that it was in my backyard.”
After reaching out to the NTSB in Washington D.C., Sauer stated they didn’t believe him at first, since someone else had already called and reported having found the door plug…