A small turboprop plane on a hurricane relief mission to Jamaica crashed Monday morning into a pond in a gated residential neighborhood of the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Coral Springs, killing two people shortly after takeoff and narrowly missing homes, authorities and a local resident said.
The Coral Springs Police Department confirmed the death in a statement Monday afternoon. But police did not provide more details about the occupants of the plane and did not immediately return messages seeking more details.
Mike Moster, the Coral Springs-Parkeld Fire Deptaw Deputy Chief, said emergency personnel responded within minutes of reporting the call. Initially, no victims were located during the rescue efforts and they moved to a recovery operation. Moser said no homes were damaged, but crews found some debris near the pond’s continuation. Local television stations showed a broken fence in the back yard of a house bordering the pond where the plane went down.
“There was no real plane in sight,” Moser said. “They followed the debris in the waterway. We had divers go into the water and try to find any victims and didn’t find any.”
Kenneth Detrolio told the South Florida Sun News that he and his wife were at their home when the plane crashed into his hillside trees, destroying palm trees before hitting the water. He said the impact of the left debris was scattered in his yard and that his pool and back porch were “contaminated” with spilled gasoline.
The smell of gasoline was so strong inside his house that it took some time to subside, he added.
“We heard a strange sound. I’ve never heard anything like this before, and apparently that’s when this plane was supposed to fly between my house and my neighbor’s house,” Detrolio told the newspaper.
Officials warned residents that police will maintain a significant presence in the area throughout Monday and Tuesday as investigators continue to collect evidence.
Broward County, where the plane took off from and where the crash occurred, is home to a vibrant African American community that took action to relieve Hurricane Melissa. A powerful category 5 Hurricane, Melissa made landfall in Jamaica last month, leaving a trail of destruction.
Moser said the police will take over recovery efforts, and federal aviation officials will investigate the cause of the crash.
The small Beefecraft King Air Plane was taken from Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport at about 10.144, according to a spokesman for the city of Fort Lauderdale, which owns and operates the airport. The crash happened shortly after the break, with police officers and firefighters responding at 10.19am, just five minutes later.
According to Federal Aviation Administration records, the plane was manufactured in 1976. The King Air models can seat between seven and 12 people, according to the plane owners and pilots association.
Federal records show the registered owner of the plane listed as international air services, a company that adapts to provide trust citizens who register their planes with fAA. A person who answered the phone at the company Monday afternoon declined to answer questions from a reporter, stating “no comment” and ending the phone call.
The flight tracking website It was not immediately clear who organized the flights.
Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on 28 October, tied for the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane in history. The storm also caused devastation in Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic and prompted relief organizations to mobilize.
Local government officials in Jamaica said in the days Melissa tore off the roofs of 120,000 structures, affecting about 90,000 families on the island that hit hardest in the Western Region. A week after Melissa’s landfall in Jamaica, more than 2,000 people were reported to be in shelters.