Military cargo plane crashes with 9 on board
Retiring C-130 used in hurricane mission hits Savannah road
A crew of nine from Puerto Rico were flying an Air National Guard C-130 into retirement when it crashed onto a highway in Georgia, and there appear to be no survivors.
PORT WENTWORTH, Ga. — A crew of nine Puerto Ricans was flying an Air National Guard C-130 into retirement in Arizona when it crashed onto a highway in Georgia on Wednesday, and authorities said there appeared to be no survivors.
The plane crashed onto Georgia State Highway 21 moments after taking off from the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport, narrowly missing people on the ground and sending an orange and black fireball into the sky.
“It miraculously did not hit any cars, any homes,” Effingham County sheriff’s spokeswoman Gena Bilbo said. “This is a very busy roadway.”
The huge plane’s fuselage appeared to have struck the median, and pieces of its wings, which spanned 132 feet, were scattered across lanes in both directions. The only part still intact was the tail section, said Chris Hanks, a spokesman for the Savannah Professional Firefighters Association.
The plane was more than 60 years old, said Isabelo Rivera, Adjutant General of Puerto Rico’s National Guard. Belonging to the 156th Air Wing, it was used to rescue U.S. citizens stranded in the British Virgin Islands following Hurricane Irma and ferry supplies to the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria last year.
“The planes that we have in Puerto Rico — it’s not news today that they are the oldest planes on inventory,” Rivera said. Puerto Rico’s National Guard has five other similar planes, two of which are not in use because they require maintenance, he said.
It’s too early to say what might have caused the accident, he said. The plane last received maintenance at the base in Savannah in April.
All nine crew members had helped with hurricane recovery efforts, Rivera said.
An official in Georgia, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it appears no one on board survived.
“This pains us,” Rivera said of the deaths. They aren’t releasing names until all the families have been contacted, but “most of them already know and have come to the base” on the island, Rivera said.
Motorist Mark Jones told the Savannah Morning News that he saw the plane hit the road right in front of him, about a mile (less than two kilometers) from the airport.
“It didn’t look like it nosedived, but it almost looked like it stalled and just went almost flat right there in the middle of the highway,” Jones said, describing how people stopped and got out of their cars following the explosion.
The U.S. territory’s Gov. Ricardo Rossello expressed his sadness, tweeting that “our prayers are with the families of the Puerto Rican crew.”