Plane Crash Kills at Least 1 Person : Aviation: Small aircraft slams into a hillside near Ventura and burns, igniting a five-acre brush fire.

A small airplane crashed near a hillside neighborhood just outside Ventura on Saturday afternoon, killing at least one person and igniting a five-acre brush fire, authorities said.

Ventura County Coroner F. Warren Lovell said one badly burned body was discovered outside the craft by Ventura firefighters who rushed to put out the brush fire soon after the plane crashed at 4:52 p.m.

Lovell said the presence of other body parts suggests there may have been another person inside the craft when it crashed into a brush-covered hillside west of Sexton Canyon Road.

The victim or victims and the plane were not identified. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jerry Johnston said the plane was “burned beyond recognition.”

Hot metal in the craft prevented officials from removing remains from the wreck site immediately. One body lay on the hillside, covered by a blanket, as a sheriff’s deputy kept watch over the site through the night.

Officials from the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were scheduled to investigate the cause of the crash today, FAA investigator Lloyd Crumrine said.

Crumrine said the wreckage, though scattered over a wide area, “seemed to be fairly intact.”

Witnesses said the plane was clearly in trouble as it flew several hundred feet over their heads.

They said large plumes of black smoke spewed from the craft’s tail before it took a nose-dive, sputtering and whining into the hillside.

“I heard it sputter--like he ran out of gas all of a sudden--and then I heard a big boom,” said Jim Woodall, who could see the wreckage from his back yard on Bridgeview Drive. “It just shook my house. I ran outside and I saw a big fireball and the hill went up in flames.”

Robert Bogardus, an off-duty sheriff’s deputy who has lived in the neighborhood for 20 years, said his home lies on a flight path for planes traveling to airports in Santa Paula, Oxnard and Camarillo.

After the crash, residents jammed emergency phone lines to report the accident, Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Carl Shoenberger said.

Ventura Fire Asst. Chief Richard Achee said the steep, brush-covered hillsides posed some difficulties for fire crews. The nearest water source was a quarter of a mile away, he said.

No homes were threatened, and the fire was extinguished about 45 minutes after the crash, fire officials said.

Brian Brantner, who heard the crash from his house, said he climbed the hillside to find survivors. Twisted pieces of the wreck were still burning when he arrived. Not far from the wreckage, he spotted a body that appeared to be that of a woman.

“There was no way anyone could have survived that,” Brantner said.

Cattle rancher Rich Atmore said the plane crashed on a corner of the 3,000-acre ranch owned by Lloyd Properties of Los Angeles.

“It was a pretty awful sight,” Atmore said.

Pascual is a Times staff writer and Lee is a correspondent.