Plane Hits 2 Homes After Midair Crash : Collision: One pilot is killed; the other lands uninjured. Seven people flee safely as the houses burst into flames.

Two small planes collided in midair Thursday on their approach to Santa Paula Airport, killing one pilot as his plane crashed into two houses near the runway, and sending seven occupants fleeing from the burning homes.

The second pilot, who was unidentified, managed to land safely at the airport at 5:35 p.m., Santa Paula police said. None of the occupants of the homes were injured.

Pilot William Lewis Clark, 49, of Buttonwillow was killed when his single-engine Cessna crashed into the houses, said Ventura County Deputy Coroner Zelmira Isaac.

He had flown from Kern County to Santa Paula to pick up his two young children, both Ojai residents, who were waiting at the airport, she said.

Authorities said they have not determined the cause of the collision.

Police said it was a miracle that only one person was killed when the careening plane smashed through the roof of one house and into another. The plane missed the people inside the first house by just feet and exploded in flames.

In the first house, about 300 yards from the end of the runway, David Garcia’s family was in the living room watching television.

“The plane came down in the living room and exploded,” Garcia said. A visitor, Tricia Olivares, said: “It went off like a bomb. Then you could see the sky through the ceiling.”

“We’re lucky to be alive,” said Chris Garcia, 22. “It’s a miracle.”

The plane then hit Francisco Perez’s small house next door, in the 1100 block of Santa Clara Street. Watching in horror from his back lawn, Perez screamed for the three boys inside--his 8-year-old son, Raul, among them--to get out.

“When the plane came down, we got through the door and called to them that the house was burning, and they came running out,” said Eliseo Moscaira, a friend of Perez.

Moscaira said that he heard the sound of the colliding planes and turned to see one “come down shaking, straight down. It hit the corner of the house about 15 feet away.”

Santa Paula Police Cmdr. Bob Gonzales said the plane struck the Garcia house in two stages: It first hit the roof and hung for a few seconds, giving the family just enough time to escape before the roof collapsed under its weight.

The fuselage of the plane then slid down the collapsed roof and into the living room, where it punched through the exterior wall and into the living room of the Perez home.

The wreckage burned at a temperature high enough for it to melt, Gonzales said.

Members of the Garcia family ran out of the house in their stocking feet. As investigators interviewed them, neighbors brought them extra socks and shoes.

Clark’s plane was involved in a long approach from the east, police said. The surviving pilot banked his aircraft and clipped the wing of the victim’s plane, Sgt. Mike Saviers said.

The midair collision apparently occurred about 100 yards east of the Garcia house and about 400 feet overhead, Gonzales said.

The plane that landed safely was slightly damaged, authorities said. The pilot was taken to the hangar at the airport under police supervision. “He’s pretty shaken up,” Gonzales said.

Clark was the 13th person to die in a plane crash at the Santa Paula airport since it opened in 1930. The airport operates without a control tower.

Four people were killed in two crashes in 1991, including two in a crash in which actor Kirk Douglas was injured.