A fatal wire strike on the Columbia River near Pasco, Washington claimed the lives of two aviators on June 24, 2026, when a vintage Cessna 195 floatplane, N3877V, struck power lines while attempting to land on the river near the Cable Bridge — also known as the Ed Röhner Bridge. The registered owner, 64-year-old Randy Peterson of Sonoma, California, and his passenger, 50-year-old Eric Wayne Houston, were en route from Napa, California to Priest Lake, Idaho to attend the Tanglefoot Splash-In, an annual gathering of rare and unusual floatplanes. Eyewitness accounts and video footage confirm the aircraft crossed the bridge before contacting wires that run parallel to it, causing the Cessna to pitch nearly inverted into the river. Peterson operated the aircraft on straight floats — not amphibious — meaning airport landings for fuel were not available to him, and water landings en route were operationally necessary.
Several compounding hazard factors are immediately apparent in this accident sequence. The power lines involved carry no orange obstruction ball markers, and the relevant VFR sectional chart does not depict the lines themselves, though the supporting towers are charted. Whether the wires fell below the FAA-mandated height threshold requiring obstruction marking — generally structures exceeding 200 feet AGL — has not been confirmed, but the visual environment near the Cable Bridge is already cluttered with towers, bridge cables, and marina infrastructure, creating a high-density wire environment at river level. Additionally, the Cessna 195's Jacobs radial engine produces significant nose-high pitch on approach, meaningfully degrading forward and downward visibility during the final stages of a water landing. This aircraft-specific limitation, combined with the inherent difficulty of spotting unmarked, thin-gauge transmission lines against a complex background of urban infrastructure, presents a nearly undetectable hazard in the critical final seconds of approach.
The accident raises serious questions about chart currency and obstruction-marking regulations as they apply to seaplane operations in corridor waterways. Urban rivers present a fundamentally different hazard profile than remote lakes or coastal bays — the traditional environment for which floatplane operations are most commonly planned and trained. Power lines crossing or running parallel to navigable rivers in urban and semi-urban settings are common throughout the Pacific Northwest and the broader Columbia River system, yet many of these crossings remain unmarked on VFR sectionals or lack physical obstruction markers. For seaplane pilots, the absence of a charted seaplane base does not indicate an absence of operational activity; fuel availability, transit routing, and event attendance all drive opportunistic water landings in undesignated areas, precisely where hazard documentation is least reliable.
For professional operators and flight departments with floatplane or amphibious assets — including Part 91, 91K, and 135 operators running turbine singles or twins on floats — this accident reinforces the need for explicit low-altitude wire-avoidance briefings and conservative decision-making regarding off-airport water landing sites. The exponential increase in wire-strike probability with decreasing altitude below 1,000 feet AGL is well-established in accident data, and wire strikes remain disproportionately fatal compared to other low-altitude collision events. Operators should treat any unplanned or non-surveyed water landing site — particularly in river corridors near developed areas, bridges, or marinas — as presumptively wire-contaminated until a thorough visual and chart survey is completed. The Cessna 195 egress configuration, with a single cabin door on the right side requiring occupants to pass through the rear cabin, also highlights the value of aircraft-specific survival and egress planning for floatplane operators, particularly in the event of inversion or rapid flooding following an impact.
This accident is the latest in a pattern of wire-strike fatalities involving experienced pilots in recent weeks, underscoring that proficiency and aeronautical experience do not provide meaningful protection against an invisible, instantaneous hazard. The broader industry implication is a renewed call for advocacy around mandatory obstruction marking of river-crossing power lines in navigable waterways, better digital integration of obstruction data into EFB and moving-map platforms, and structured pre-landing hazard surveys as a required element of seaplane operational culture — not merely a recommended practice.