At least two people died after an executive jet fell into a neighborhood of San Diego, a city in California, where military families live during a fog on the morning of Thursday (22), according to authorities.
It is unclear how many people were on board the jet, but all deaths seem to have been caused by the plane, said San Diego Fire Deputy Chief Dan Eddy during a press conference.
The accident burned almost a dozen houses, forcing families to evacuate several blocks, the authorities said.
“I can’t describe the scene in words, but with the jet fuel running through the streets and all on fire at the same time, it was horrible to see,” said Scott Wahl, San Diego’s chief police chief.
A spokesman for the San Diego Fire Department told CNN That a Cessna 550 plane, often called citation, “crashed near Montgomery’s executive airport around 3:45 am.”
The private jet is commonly used for business travel and can transport eight to ten people.
The National Transport Security Council (NTSB) and the Federal Administration of Aviation are investigating the accident.
Meteorological observation data show that visibility fell to 800 meters, with low cloud ceilings at the time of the plane crash.
Eddy said there was “more than one” fatality aboard the plane, but FAA is working to confirm how many people were registered travelers.
Captain Robert Heely, commander of the San Diego Naval Base, said the neighborhood is “one of the largest military housing units in the world.”
“We certainly have many families of affected military,” Heely said, before adding their condolences to the families of people aboard the plane.
According to the Flightware flight tracking website, Citation took off from Teterboro Airport, on the outskirts of New York City, on Wednesday night (21).
The plane stopped in Wichita, Kansas, about an hour before flying to San Diego.
The pilot announced on the radio that the plane was three miles from a planned landing on track 28 of Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport, according to a recording from the Liveatc.net site.
There was no sign of problem and no emergency was declared.
The airport has a control tower, but it does not have employees at night, so pilots announce their intentions to any other pilot listening to the “common traffic counseling frequency.”
Citation, according to FAA records, is owned by a company in Alaska and was built in 1985.
This content was originally published in an executive jet falls into a military neighborhood of San Diego and leaves dead on CNN Brazil.
Source: CNN Brasil
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