A small plane crashed onto the roof of a California factory building and caught fire on video Thursday, killing two people and injuring 18 others, officials said.
Less than two minutes after takeoff from Orange County's Fullerton Municipal Airport, the four-seater, single-engine plane nosedived into a furniture manufacturing building where at least 200 people were working indoors at the time, according to FlightAware. Tracking Website.
Officials said police officers and firefighters rushed to the scene of the accident around 2 p.m., evacuating the building, which is home to furniture manufacturing company Michael Nicholas Designs, and surrounding businesses while exploding a large fire. I fought.
According to the Fullerton Police Department, two people were pronounced dead at the scene, 10 people were rushed to area hospitals, and eight people were treated and released at the scene. It was not immediately clear whether the two fatalities were people on the plane or on the ground.
Surveillance footage from a nearby building showed the harrowing moment when the plane appeared to tilt sideways and crash into the roof of the factory at high speed, sending a huge plume of flames and black smoke into the air.
Authorities are investigating the cause of the accident.
Airport operations official Chris Villalobos said the plane's pilot told air traffic control before the crash that he intended to turn around and make an emergency landing. He did not say what the problem was that caused the emergency landing.
Villalobos said the pilot was a regular at the single-runway airport, about nine miles from Disneyland, which also had a hangar. He frequently took off from small airports.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the plane was a single-engine RV-10 van with four seats.
The identities of the two people who died have not been revealed.
with post wire
