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A small plane clipped electrical and telephone wires, crossed a busy street and plowed into a residential building Tuesday in Akron, Ohio, before igniting in flames, authorities said. An undetermined number of people in the plane were killed, but everybody on the ground was safe.
SOURCE: 7 dead, possibly more, in Akron plane crash https://t.co/xczOTG0lrx pic.twitter.com/H6lrIghzRn
— WKYC Channel 3 News (@wkyc) November 10, 2015State Highway Patrol Lt. Bill Haymaker said that “due to the severity of the fire,” it would be some time before it could be determined how many people were aboard the Hawker H25, a small business jet that can carry as many as 10 people, which took off from Dayton, Ohio. But he confirmed that there were no survivors.
Nobody was immediately believed to have been in the building, and no casualties were initially reported on the ground.
“Obviously, the situation could have been worse, granted, if anybody was home,” Haymaker said.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane was on its final approach to Akron Fulton International Airport when it crashed into a building about 3 p.m. ET.
Quincy Vagell, a meteorologist for The Weather Channel, said conditions were “poor, with low visibility and fog.”
“Outside of a controlled runway landing, getting a plane down safely in an emergency would have been a very tough task,” Vagell said.
Fire and other emergency vehicles filled the street as thick, black smoke billowed at the scene at Skelton and Mogadore roads in southeast Akron.
“I heard a loud plane that sounded super low to the ground,” Hannah McCune, who lives near the crash scene, told NBC News. “Then I heard a big boom and looked up and saw a bunch of smoke and flames.”
M. Johnson