Fatal plane crash in San Diego neighborhood leaves ‘gigantic debris field,’ flames and fuel spill
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A private jet flying in dense fog crashed into a San Diego neighborhood early Thursday morning, sparking intense flames that scorched several homes, mangled dozens of vehicles and forced almost 100 people to evacuate.
The only known fatalities were the occupants of the aircraft. It still wasn’t clear exactly how many people were on board, but San Diego Fire-Rescue Department Assistant Chief Dan Eddy said there were at least two.
The FAA identified the plane as a Cessna 550. Eddy said the plane can hold eight to 10 passengers.
The plane crashed into a military housing community in the Murphy Canyon area just before 4 a.m. Thursday, Eddy said. Officials have confirmed that no residents were killed in the crash.
“Crews arrived on scene to find multiple homes and cars on fire,” Eddy said at a news conference. Firefighters have since been able to quell the flames, but at least 10 homes were destroyed and a block of vehicles — at least a dozen, according to footage from the scene — were left completely mangled, he said.
Nearly five months after the deadly Eaton fire swept through Altadena, officials have yet to explain the reasons for significant delays in evacuation alerts.
While it initially appeared that no residents were injured, officials have since confirmed that one person was taken to the hospital after evacuating, said Jose Ysea, a San Diego police spokesperson. He said two others were treated for minor injuries on site.
“This is a worst-case scenario: a plane into homes,” Eddy said. He said the crash left behind a “gigantic debris field.”
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Images and video from the scene showed a massive hole in the side of a single-family home, with nearby cars almost completely flattened. The street was filled with blackened debris and unrecognizable vehicles.
“I can’t quite put words to describe what this scene looked like, jet fuel going down the street, everything on fire all at once,” said San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl. “It was pretty horrific.”
Wahl said almost 100 people have been displaced from the crash and the area remains closed for continued investigations and cleanup. He called the efforts of first responders heroic.
The private plane took off from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey around 11:15 p.m. Wednesday and stopped for just under an hour in Wichita, Kan., according to the flight tracking site FlightAware. It was headed for Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport, a general aviation airport owned by the city of San Diego and located less than three miles from the crash site.
Shortly after 3:40 a.m. the pilot announced on the radio that the plane was three miles away from landing on runway 28, according to a recording from LiveATC.net. The pilot did not signal any problem with the aircraft and did not issue a distress call in the recordings reviewed by The Times.
Sable Offshore Corp. has restarted offshore oil production 10 years after the operation was shuttered following a major oil spill along Santa Barbara’s coast.
The crash was reported at 3:47 a.m.
The National Transportation Safety Board was en route to investigate along with the FAA, Eddy said. He declined to comment on the focus of the investigation, but it appeared visibility or nearby power lines could have been factors.
Dense fog had rolled into the area around the time the plane was approaching the airport. Visibility was at half a mile at 3:55 a.m. and had dropped to a quarter of a mile just after 4 a.m. in the area around the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, which is just a few miles north of the crash site, according to the National Weather Service.
“We had a marine layer that was deep enough that the clouds got into some of the valleys this morning,” said Adam Roser, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego. “This one kind of crept in from the ocean into the valley and led to some of those foggy conditions.”
Eddy said that investigators were also looking into a debris field under some power lines not far from the neighborhood where the plane crashed.
“There’s a clipped power line behind us back there,” Eddy said. “We’re trying to figure out if that was involved from the plane.”
The Cessna 550 that crashed was owned by a company in Alaska, according to FAA records. It was built in 1985.
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