Some local new sources have an article about the airport buying property near to the airport.
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Drive the neighborhoods surrounding the Birmingham Shuttlesworth International Airport and on one stretch you might think you are in the countryside. Wild animals, trees and tall weeds have begun to reclaim city blocks where houses once stood. Streets and alleys have begun to crumble back into the earth. You'll see things out of place - such as a mailbox on a curb but no house.
But then turn a corner, and you are right back in the city, with single family homes and residents waiting for their turn to move.
Since 1986, the Birmingham Airport Authority has purchased thousands of houses in surrounding neighborhoods, where jet engines pollute the air and shake residents awake at night. But other households are left to deal with the noise and pollution -
and also the unthinkable, a plane falling from the sky - and wonder why their houses have not been bought.
Barbara Benson,
whose home off Treadwell Road was nearly struck by a falling plane on Wednesday, doesn't understand why homes around her have been acquired, but hers, which is the last house a plane flies over before landing, has never been bought.
"Why would they buy every house around us and leave us here?" Barbara Benson asked.
Barbara Benson Describes Hearing A UPS Plane Crash Near Her Birmingham Home BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- Barbara Benson describes hearing a loud boom and red flash as she was awoke from a UPS cargo plane crashing through the trees by her Airports Hills home in Birmingham, Alabama Wednesday August 14, 2013.
The property purchases the airport authority have done are part of a program known as "Part 150," which refers to the section of federal regulations which govern them.The program allows airports to buy nearby properties which, through a study and map, have been determined to be affected by airplane noise.
The airport authority submitted its study in 2005 to the Federal Aviation Administration identifying more than 600 single-family residences, two multi-family residences, three churches and a school, according to airport authority information.
At that time, the study estimated the purchases would cost $80 million spread out over several fiscal years, with federal matches covering about 95 percent of the cost.
Information publicly available on the airport's website - which airport officials said is up-to-date - shows that in phases since 2009, the airport has purchased at least 570 properties. It is unclear how many more properties are left to be purchased.
The airport authority did not provide further comment on the program.
"We are reserving comment at this time to allow NTSB to complete their investigation of Flight 1354," spokeswoman Toni Herrera-Bast said in a statement.
But for airport neighborhood residents, how the airport authority defines an affected neighborhood and how they define "affected" differ.
Tyrone Reed, who lives about a block away from Benson, said that the airport has yet to make an offer on his house, too.
"She called me at work and after she told me what happened she said, 'Now are you ready to move?'" Reed said.
Reed said that in the last three weeks, he had seen more planes flying low into the north-south runway.
"On Saturday I was sitting on the porch, and I saw one fly right over Mrs. Benson's home so low, I didn't think it was going to make it," he said.
Reed had just started his shift at ACIPCO, when UPS Flight 1354 crashed Wednesday, but his wife, Letita Reed, was awake and at home when the plane crashed. She was close enough that she heard what sounded like engines sputtering before a series of explosions, he said.
"She called me at work and after she told me what happened she said, 'Now are you ready to move?'" Reed said.
Reed said that after Wednesday, he is ready.
Since 1989, Birmingham city council woman Kim Rafferty had owned a home on 90th Street until the Airport Authority bought it from her in June. For Rafferty, relocating was an end to a decades-long struggle with the airport, but when Flight 1354 went down on Wednesday she spent three hours responding to phone calls and texts from friends and former neighbors.
According to Rafferty, the airport's acquisition of property has lacked transparency, and many homeowners never know whether their houses are slated for buyouts until they receive a letter of intent in the mail.
"It says that someone is going to come by your house and you need to work with them," she says. "Then some guy comes by to do an appraisal and about five or six months later, they make you an offer."
The airport has not been using eminent domain in recent years, Rafferty said. But homeowners are left with only once choice - accept the offer the airport gives you or be left behind as the homes around you deteriorate and are eventually demolished.
Homeowners who aren't made offers by the airport can have even worse problems, she said. While she lived in the Roebuck neighborhood, her home was burglarized three times. Many homeowners move away and rent the homes they leave behind, creating a lack of cohesion and community there, she said.
The airport's strategy, according to Rafferty, has been to create a blight barrier between itself and the surrounding neighborhoods, rather than reintegrating itself into those communities.
"In their whole history they have not done one thing to meld with the community that is around them," she said. "All they have done has been (noise) mediation or their expansion programs."
Birmingham City Hall has little control over the airport authority, other than appointing board members, and there has not been a cooperative effort to address neighborhood issues, Rafferty said.
While Rafferty has ties to those neighborhoods, Councilwoman Maxine Parker represents that district. When UPS Flight 1354 clipped power lines and treetops on Treadwell Road, Parker's campaign signs were mixed among the debris.
Once the crash investigation concludes, Parker said, she would like to host community meetings along with the Birmingham Airport Authority to hear those residents' concerns and to learn what more needs to be done to help them.
According to Parker, the city and airport need to do more to help those residents with their concerns, especially how low planes are allowed to fly over those neighborhoods.
"I had no idea that planes were going as low as they are until I talked to residents out there today," she said. "The airport needs to do something about that."
AL.com reporter Mike Smith contributed reporting for this article.
This article was edited at 10:40 to correct the neighborhood where Kim Rafferty lived. Her house was in the Roebuck neighborhood, not Airport Hills.