Dramatic video captured the moment a small plane crashed onto a crowded road in suburban Seattle on Tuesday.
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Police said the plane went down shortly after taking off from an airport in Mukilteo, Wash., about 40 kilometres north of Seattle.
The plane lost power and failed to restart, forcing the pilot to attempt a landing on the street.
“Maybe 500-1,000 feet off the ground, they experienced an engine anomaly,” Tom Little, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, told KING news.
“He began to descend and descend rapidly. He saw that Harbor Pointe Boulevard was a clear and open roadway. He diverted the aircraft and steered the aircraft,” Officer Myron Travis told KIRO news.
Video recorded by a passing car’s dash cam captured the harrowing moments, as the single-engine Piper PA32 descended, hitting a power line and a traffic lamp post, before sending a ball of flames and thick black smoke across the roadway.
“I thought it was the end of our lives,” Khal Nouri, a driver who witnessed the crash, told KING news.
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“He didn’t want to hit a building obviously, he didn’t want to hit an area where people are … He did a fantastic job,” Nouri said, praising the pilot.
Police said several vehicles were damaged in the crash, including one that was left charred after the plane dropped burning fuel onto it.
“That’s probably the closest I’ve ever come to really thinking like, ‘oh, this is the end,” Amanda Hayes, who was in a nearby vehicle at the time of the crash, said.
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“It just looked suspiciously low and couple seconds later I was like, ‘it’s too low.’ It collided with the telephone pole, light post, and hit the ground,” Hayes said. “It exploded and hit all the cars in the line including our van.”
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“We definitely felt the fireball as it went over the van,” Hayes added.
Police confirmed the pilot and his passenger, as well as all of the motorists involved in the accident, escaped the crash uninjured.
The incident knocked out power to nearly 9,000 homes. Power was restored within a couple hours.
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