5 DEAD AS PLANE CRASHES INTO CALIFORNIA NEIGHBOURHOOD,
YORBA LINDA, California — A small plane shook homes and “sounded like a missile” as it broke apart and rained chunks of metal into a Southern California neighbourhood, 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 twinengine propeller-driven Cessna 414A was in the air, she said.
Antonio Pastini, 75, of Gardnerville, Nevada, 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 might 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.”
Elfver, 75, said he ran to his backyard and saw a house engulfed in flames. He ran toward it along with a crowd of neighbours, 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 neighbour’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 neighbourhood. “It was already breaking up.”
The aircraft, which can carry up to eight people, took off from the Fullerton Municipal Airport about 19 kilometres away, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Allen Kenitzer said.
Preliminary radar data shows the plane reached about 7,800 feet 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, 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-storey house ablaze.
A portion of the plane’s right wing had not been found.