Feel-good flight ends with crash
A Canadian acrobatic jet crashed into a British Columbia neighbourhood yesterday during a flyover intended to boost morale during the pandemic, killing one crew member, seriously injuring another and setting a house on fire. Video appeared to show the plane’s crew ejecting.
The crash left debris scattered across the neighbourhood near the airport in the city of Kamloops, 420km northeast of Vancouver. Canada’s defence department said emergency crews were responding.
‘‘It is with heavy hearts that we announce that one member of the CF Snowbirds team has died and one has sustained serious injuries,’’ The Royal Canadian Air Force said in a tweet. The air force said the surviving member does not have life-threatening injuries.
Video posted to Twitter appears to show two Snowbirds taking off from Kamloops Airport. One of the aircraft subsequently climbed into the sky before rolling over and plunging to the ground. The video appears to show at least one person ejecting from the plane before it disappears behind a stand of trees and an explosion is heard.
A local resident who lives seven houses from the crash site and had been watching the aircraft said he saw ‘‘the Snowbird going straight down.’’
‘‘I saw what looked like a parachute about, say, 20 feet over the house, and it disappeared from sight, and the parachute hadn’t fully deployed yet — it was still sort of straight up and down,’’ Kenny Hinds said.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the cause of the crash is under investigation.
Rose Miller lives directly across the street from where the plane hit. She’d watched the Snowbirds arrive on Saturday, and she went to her front window yesterday when she heard the roar of jet engines.
Miller said she heard a loud bang and wondered whether it might be a sonic boom.
Then she watched the plane smash onto the ground.
‘‘It looked to me like it was mostly on the road, but it just exploded. It went everywhere,’’ she said. ‘‘In fact, I got a big, huge piece in my backyard. The cops said it was the ejection seat.’’
Miller said a couple in their early 70s lives in the home. Both are OK, she said, noting that she’d spoken with them after they were evacuated to a nearby street. The woman had been in the basement while the man was behind the house.
Miller said section of roof on a home on a nearby street has been covered up.
‘‘This accident really shakes us to our core,’’ Kamloops Mayor Ken Christian said. About five houses had to be evacuated.