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2nd bolt from blue

Horror hit home of '97 parade victim

BY RICH SCHAPIRO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Aerial photograph taken yesterday shows crash- and fire-ravaged apartments in Belaire on E. 72nd St. Amazingly, no residents were killed or seriously injured.

Kathy Caronna
Cory Lidle's doomed plane didn't just crash into anybody's apartment.
It exploded into the empty bedroom of Kathleen Caronna, the Manhattan woman who was critically injured when a balloon knocked part of a lamppost onto her head during the 1997 Thanksgiving Day Parade.

The plane's engine was found only feet away from where Caronna sleeps, her relatives told the Daily News yesterday.

"She lost her whole bedroom," said a family member, who asked not to be identified. "Everything's devastated. ... She's got nowhere to go."

Caronna was on her way home Wednesday when the plane crashed into the Belaire at 2:42p.m. She was extremely shaken after the disaster, telling loved ones she would have been home if the plane had crashed only a few minutes later.

Her sister-in-law, Lisa Brown, 43, called Caronna's situation "unbelievable."

"How do you go through two major things like this?" Brown asked. "It's spooky. It's very spooky."

Caronna was a 33-year-old investment analyst in 1997 when she was critically injured at the Thanksgiving Day parade.

She was watching the festivities with her husband and 7-month-old son at 72nd St. and Central Park West when handlers lost control of the six-story-high Cat in the Hat balloon.

A section of a streetlight weighing several hundred pounds fell and hit Caronna on the head. Her skull was fractured, and she spent 24 days in a coma before waking up. She later sued Macy's and the city for $395 million, but settled for an undisclosed amount in 2001.

Yesterday, investigators escorted Caronna into her charred apartment to survey the damage, her relatives said.

She has been living in the high-rise with her husband, Ignazio Massimo, and their 9-year-old son, Alessandro.

"This is a tough time for us, and I can't really talk now," her husband said yesterday.

Caronna's mother, Helen Brown, said her daughter's apartment is unlivable. The bedroom went up in flames. Asked about her daughter, Brown said, "She's fine."

Originally published on October 13, 2006

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