Names released of 2 friends killed in Columbia River plane crash in Tri-Cities
The men who died Wednesday in an airplane crash into the Columbia River in the Tri-Cities were friends from Sonoma, Calif., flying to an event in Idaho.
The pilot was Randy J. Peterson, 64, and his passenger was Eric Wayne Houston, 50, said Franklin County Coroner Curtis McGary.
They had left Napa River, Calif., on Wednesday to fly to Priest Lake, where a gathering of seaplanes was planned.
Peterson was a partner at Peterson Motorsports of Sonoma, and has been restoring racecars, from 1920s Formula One cars to 1970s stock cars, for more than two decades, according to the company’s online information.
He also has raced vintage cars for two decades, including 1960s Corvettes and 1970s stock cars.
An autopsy is planned Friday in Spokane, McGary said.
Peterson and Houston were flying west in a 1949 single-engine Cessna with pontoons at a low altitude over the cable bridge about 2:30 p.m.
It dropped suddenly as it approached a high-tension power line crossing the river from Pasco to Kennewick just west of the bridge as if it was trying to avoid the line, according to witnesses.
The plane hit and snapped the bottom line crossing the river and fell into the water, where it floated upside down and was carried with the current beneath the cable bridge toward the railroad bridge.
Boaters, jet ski riders and a person on shore who went into the river and tried to get the men out of the plane, but without success. Police boat crews hooked the plane and pulled it closer to shore and kept it from drifting farther downstream.
A Lampson crane was used to lift the wreckage from the river and recover the bodies.
The National Transportation Safety Board will be investigating what happened.
Power line to be replaced
The crash caused a power outage in much of Kennewick and part of Pasco, and the snapped power line on the Pasco side of the river sparked a small grass fire.
Benton PUD, which owns the line, said it expects to take two to seven days to replace the line that snapped, which is one of three lines stretching between towers on Clover Island and the Pasco shoreline.
During the power outage, businesses in Kennewick escorted customers outside from their dark interiors.
The largest outage was in Kennewick, where nearly 11,500 customers lost power south of the Columbia River from Highway 395 west toward Leslie Road.
Benton PUD was able to reroute power to restore service by about 3 p.m.
Franklin PUD had about 2,000 customers lose power in the area east of North 20th Avenue and South of West Court Street and also had electricity restored around 3 p.m.
1998 power line plane crash
Wednesday’s tragedy was reminiscent of another small plane crash into the Columbia River in 1998.
On Nov. 6, 1998, a single propeller Cessna TR182 struck power lines near the Vantage Bridge on a clear day. The plane, which took off from Kennewick’s Vista Field, dropped into the frigid Columbia River.
Two U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologists on board for a monthly bird survey were killed. Kathleen Cheap, 48, of Irrigon, Ore., and Mike Callow, 50, of Boardman, Ore., both died.
The pilot, Clif Dyer, with what was then Kennewick Aviation, was seriously injured but survived.
This story was originally published June 25, 2026 at 10:52 AM with the headline "Names released of 2 friends killed in Columbia River plane crash in Tri-Cities."