Santa Monica Plane Crash Was ‘Unsurvivable’ [Video]
A Santa Monica plane crash has left at least one person dead after a failed landing. A twin-engine Cessna Citation, a small business jet, went off the runway after touching down. The plane then continued, crashing into a hanger, where both burst into flames. Though rescue teams are investigating the crash site, officials says that they do not expect to find survivors from the jet. It is unknown how many passengers were on the jet. Cessna Citations typically carry between five and nine people.
As bad as the crash was, it could have been much worse. As LA Times reports, one official from the Santa Monica Airport Commission, David Goddard, said that the explosive crash happened only 150 feet from nearby homes. If the plane had not hit the hanger and continued, it would have crashed violently into residences and possibly even more deadly.
Goddard recalls driving home toward Sunset Park Sunday evening when he saw the first signs of the Santa Monica plane crash. He says that at first he mistook the plumes of smoke for fog. The closer he got to the airport, though, the more the smoke began to smell like burning fuel.
As Goddard parked outside the fences of the Santa Monica airport, he says he saw the plane’s fuselage under a hangar’s collapsed doors. He says that the fireball was large, as burns could be seen far away on the building’s north side.
Goddard says that, as chairman of the Santa Monica Airport Commission, he had been unsuccessfully trying to reduce airport operations over safety concerns. Though the cause of the crash is still a mystery, this may have been a factor.
As NBC Los Angeles reports, several local witnesses saw the explosion. One described seeing the crashed plane on fire. Though the fires first appeared minor, the jet then suddenly exploded, she says. It continued to explode, each one bigger than the one before it. A number of other local residents say they could easily hear the loud booms and the following plumes of smoke.
Soon, local fire teams arrived on the scene. The crews did not take any victims to hospitals, an official says. After the Santa Monica plane crash the airport’s runway remains closed for rescue and investigation efforts.
[Image via Wikimedia Commons / Adrian Pingstone]
