The descending plane sounded ‘like a missile’ before a deadly Calif. crash, neighbors say

long-term effects of the chemicals in the vapor, some of which are toxic.

At the same time, there have been conflicting studies on whether e-cigarettes actually help smokers kick the habit. Last year, an influential panel of U.S. experts concluded there was only “limited evidence” of their effectiveness.

In the new study, researchers tracked nearly 900 middle-age smokers who were randomly assigned to receive either ecigarettes or nicotine replacement products, including patches, gums and lozenges. After one year, 18 percent of e-cigarette users were smoke-free, versus 9.9 percent of those using the other products.

“Anything which helps smokers to avoid heart disease and cancer and lung disease is a good thing, and e-cigarettes can do that,” said Peter Hajek, study coauthor and an addiction specialist at Queen Mary University of London.

The study was more rigorous than previous ones, which largely surveyed smokers about e-cigarette use. Participants in this experiment underwent chemical breath testing.

“If you have a method of helping people with smoking cessation that is both more effective and less costly, that should be of great interest to anyone providing health services,” said Kenneth Warner, a retired University of Michigan professor who was not involved in the study.

Several factors may have boosted the results: All the participants were recruited from a government smoking-cessation program and were presumably motivated to quit. They also received four weeks of anti-smoking counseling.

The researchers didn’t test e-cigarettes against new drugs such as Pfizer’s Chantix, which has shown higher rates of success than older nicotine-based treatments.

YORBA LINDA, Calif. — A small plane shook homes and “sounded like a missile” as it broke apart and rained chunks of metal into a Southern California neighborhood, igniting a house fire that killed four people, witnesses said Monday.

The pilot, a retired Chicago police officer living in Nevada, also died Sunday. Investigators were collecting pieces of the plane that fell into homes across about four blocks in Yorba Linda, a community southeast of Los Angeles.

“The witnesses I’ve spoken with say that they saw the airplane coming out of the clouds — it was still in one piece — and then they saw the tail breaking off and then the wing breaking off and then something like smoke before the airplane impacted the ground,” said Maja Smith, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.

Those witnesses did not report an explosion while the twin-engine propellerdriven Cessna 414A was in the air, she said.

Antonio Pastini, 75, of Gardnerville, Nev., was the only person aboard, Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Cory Martino said.

Authorities were trying to identify the people who died in the house, describing them only as two males and two females. Martino said DNA may be required because of the condition of the bodies.

Two other people were hospitalized with moderate injuries, he said.

Yorba Linda resident Dave Elfver said he was getting ready to go to a friend’s house to watch the Super Bowl when he heard a whining sound “like a motorcycle going a hundred miles per hour.”

“The whole house shook. I thought it was an earthquake, but the whining sound didn’t make any sense.”

Mr. Elfver, 75, said he ran to his backyard and saw a house engulfed in flames. He ran toward it along with a crowd of neighbors, and only then he saw an airplane wing in the street.

“I didn’t realize what it was until I ran around the corner,” he said Monday.

Across the street, one of the columns of a neighbor’s home was collapsed and debris from the plane was strewn throughout the street. Another home had broken windows.

Shawn Winch, 49, said he was in his backyard when he heard what “sounded like a missile coming at my house.” He said he saw the plane veer off and debris falling.

“It wasn’t intact,” he said as the plane came toward the neighborhood. “It was already breaking up.”

The aircraft, which can carry up to eight people, took off from the Fullerton Municipal Airport about 12 miles (19 kilometers) away, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Allen Kenitzer said.

Preliminary radar data shows the plane reached about 7,800 feet (2,377 meters) and then rapidly fell, said Eliott Simpson, a NTSB investigator.

The main cabin of the airplane and one engine were found at the bottom of a ravine in the backyard of a house, and the other engine made a hole in the street, Mr. Simpson said.

The property where the fuselage ended up is about three houses down from the home that burned. It was not immediately clear what set the two-story house ablaze.

Video showed panicked residents running to the house as flames and dark smoke engulfed it. One man used a garden house to douse a burning wing that landed on the street.