Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived Tuesday morning in Pompano Beach to begin probing the fiery plane crash that left three people critically injured.
During a briefing at the crash site, Senior Air Safety Investigator Leah Read told reporters that she and the other investigators were getting their first look at the scene and were not close to drawing any conclusions about the crash.
“I know they were on takeoff and obviously something happened and that’s what we’re hopefully going to determine here,” Read said.
One woman and two men were hospitalized Monday after the fixed-wing, multi-engine Beechcraft 76 clipped a house on the 900 block of North Harbor Drive, hopscotched over another home and ended up engulfed in flames in the backyard of a third, officials and witnesses said.
Those in the plane suffered “significant burns,” Pompano Beach Fire Rescue Chief John Jurgle said. “They were all severe burn injuries, between 30 and 40 percent of their body,” Jurgle said.
That people survived the crash will be helpful to the investigation, Read said.
“It’s always wonderful when people survive any kind of accident and what’s going to be good about this is that three witnesses who were actually onboard the plane – as their medical condition improves we plan to be interviewing them as well, ” she said.
The names of those who were on the plane have not yet been released.
Read said investigators will be assessing the crash site on Tuesday and hope to move the wreckage to another location by the end of the day.
She said preliminary findings about the crash could be expected in about five days and a full “factual report” would be released in six to nine months.
“Out of nowhere we could hear the sound of the plane coming down,” said Mason Pizzo, 23, who lives across the street and was eating when the crash happened about 3 p.m. He described a “boom and bang” that made him realize his neighborhood was not just being buzzed by an inexperienced pilot.
“It seems like the whole neighborhood shook there for a minute,” said Michele Miller, 62, who was leaving a nearby dog park when she heard the explosion.
Gary Mitchell, 71, who also lives across the street from the crash scene, described the explosion as a “fireball … maybe 100 feet in the air.”
Larry Ferris was washing his car on his driveway when he said he saw a plane fall out of the sky and toward a house. “I saw the plane blow up in the backyard,” he said. “I ran across the street and grabbed a garden hose.”
Other neighbors and passers-by immediately sprang into action. Pizzo said he called 911 and ran toward the blaze with a fire extinguisher, handing his phone to the neighbor whose house was clipped. By the time he reached the wreckage, Pizzo said he saw two good Samaritans in what appeared to be wetsuits had already rescued two of the plane’s three occupants.
“I’m amazed and happy that all the people came together as a neighborhood in a time of craziness like that,” Pizzo said. “Nowadays, that’s hard to find.”
Ferris said the people in the plane were badly burned. “One of them said, ‘Please help me, I’m on fire,'” Ferris said.
Fire-rescue units were on scene in minutes.
“When they arrived, they found one house engulfed in flames in the back half of the house and, two houses over, a plane that was also involved in flames,” Jurgle said.
The homeowner of the clipped house got out before firefighters arrived and was not injured in the crash, Jurgle said. Efforts to reach him Monday were unsuccessful. The owners of the home where the plane landed declined to comment.
The plane’s occupants were taken to either Broward Health Medical Center or North Broward Health, Jurgle said.
Two of those inside the aircraft were able to walk from the crash, while investigators were looking into whether the third may have been thrown from the plane during the incident, Jurgle said.
The Harbor Village neighborhood of single-family homes is east of Federal Highway and the nearby Pompano Beach Airpark and west of the Intracoastal Waterway.
The plane is registered to Florida Aviation Academy, which runs a flight school at the Pompano Beach Aripark. Calls to the school were not returned late Monday afternoon and early evening.
The same school owned a Cessna 172 that made an emergency landing west of Coral Springs last August. No one was injured in that incident.
The Federal Aviation Administration said preliminary information about the aircraft in Monday’s crash shows it came down shortly after departing from the Pompano Beach Airpark. The pilot was practicing takeoffs and landings before the accident, an FAA spokeswoman said.
The National Transportation Safety Board will determine the probable cause for it falling from the sky.
Neighbors said they have been complaining about low-flying aircraft for years.
“Now it does [concern me] that a plane can just drop in your backyard,” said Ferris. “I know that could happen anytime now.”
Staff researcher Barbara Hijek and staff writer Linda Trischitta contributed to this report.
rolmeda@tribpub.com, 954-356-4457 or Twitter @rolmeda