Not sure if this adds or confuses. I doubt the sequence of events was exactly as reported..
Accident: Expressjet E145 at Denver on Apr 3rd 2012, smoke in cockpit, hard short landing
An Expressjet Embraer ERJ-145 on behalf of United, registration N27152 performing flight EV-5912/UA-5912 from Peoria,IL to Denver,CO (USA) with 17 passengers and 3 crew, was cleared to land on runway 34R. Tower controller was issuing instructions to other aircraft when he interrupted in surprise at 08:33L (14:33Z) and exclaimed "he hit the lights" followed by "runway 34R is closed" instructing the next arriving aircraft to cancel approach clearance, maintain 9000 feet and continue on the localizer..
Sources at the airport reported that the smoke began to emanate when the aircraft was on short final descending through about 1000 feet AGL, quickly filling the cockpit. When the aircraft was just about to overfly the numbers the crew had lost visual reference due to the smoke and brought the aircraft down rapidly stopping as fast as they could. Tower did not believe the first Mayday Call (already after touch down) and pressed the crash button after the second Mayday Call.