A small plane crashed in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on Sunday, narrowly missing a retirement community.
Five people onboard the Beechcraft Bonanza aircraft were injured when it went down and slammed into the retirement community’s parking lot, NBC Philadelphia reported.
The plane had just taken off from the Lancaster Airport around 3:00 p.m. on its way to Springfield Beckley Municipal airport in Ohio.
Video footage shows the fiery scene after the plane crashed in between parked cars:
Authorities said three of the injured were transported from a local hospital to a burn center for treatment while the other two were released from the hospital, the Associated Press (AP) reported Monday.
Moments before the crash, the pilot is heard on audio telling the air traffic controller that a door on the plane was open and he needed to turn around and land, per the NBC article:
After the air traffic controller responds, the pilot tells him that he can’t hear him due to the wind and that he’s going to return to land. The air traffic controller then tells the pilot that one of the runways is cleared for landing. About 13 seconds later, the air traffic controller tells the pilot to “pull up.” A little less than a minute later, the air traffic controller reports to “Rescue 1” that the aircraft is down.
The retirement community was identified as Brethren Village which less than a mile from the airport.
Meanwhile, authorities were glad that no lives were lost during the incident.
“I don’t know if I consider it a miracle but the fact that we have a plane crash were everybody survives and nobody on the ground is hurt is a wonderful thing. Anytime you have transportation, you always have risk when people are moving, but to have this type of ending where, so far, is a great day for us,” a police official told reporters:
Approximately one dozen vehicles were damaged during the crash, but no buildings were damaged. When first responders arrived at the scene minutes after the plane went down, firefighters were able to quell the blaze.
Now, officials with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are investigating what happened.
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