Two people dead after small plane on hurricane relief trip to Jamaica crashes in Florida | Florida
A small turboprop plane on a hurricane relief mission to Jamaica crashed into a pond in a gated community in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Coral Springs on Monday morning, killing two people shortly after takeoff and narrowly missing their homes, authorities and a local resident said.
The Coral Springs Police Department confirmed the deaths in a statement Monday afternoon. But police did not provide further details about those on the plane and did not immediately respond to messages seeking further details.
Emergency crews responded within minutes of the call reporting the crash, said Mike Moser, deputy chief of the Coral Springs-Parkland Fire Department. Initially, no victims could be located during rescue efforts and a rescue operation was initiated. Moser said no homes were damaged, but crews did find some debris near the retention pond. Local aerial footage showed a broken fence in the backyard of a house bordering the pond where the plane crashed.
“There was no real plane to be seen,” Moser said. “They followed the debris trail into the water. Our divers who entered the water tried to look for victims, but could not find them.”
Kenneth DeTrolio told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that he and his wife were at their home when the plane crashed into their backyard, destroying their fence and knocking down palm trees before hitting the water. He said the impact scattered debris across his yard and that his pool and back porch were “contaminated” by spilled fuel.
He added that the smell of gasoline was so strong in his home that it took several hours for it to dissipate.
DeTrolio told the newspaper: “We heard a very strange sound. I had never heard anything like it before and it looked like this plane must have flown between my house and my neighbor’s house.”
Authorities warned residents that police will maintain a significant presence in the area Monday and Tuesday as investigators continue to gather evidence.
Broward County, where the plane took off and the crash occurred, is home to a vibrant Caribbean American community that mobilized to collect relief supplies in the wake of Hurricane Melissa. Melissa, a powerful Category 5 hurricane, slammed into Jamaica late last month, leaving destruction in its wake.
Police will take over rescue efforts and federal aviation authorities will investigate the cause of the crash, Moser said.
The small Beechcraft King Air plane took off from the Fort Lauderdale administrative airport at approximately 10:14 a.m., according to a spokesperson for the City of Fort Lauderdale, which owns and operates the airport. The crash occurred just after takeoff, and Coral Springs police officers and firefighters responded just five minutes later at 10:19 a.m.
According to Federal Aviation Administration records, the plane was produced in 1976. According to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, King Air models have a seating capacity of 7 to 12 people.
Federal records show the plane’s registered owner is listed as International Air Services, a company that markets itself as specializing in providing non-U.S. citizens with trust agreements that allow them to register their planes with the FAA. A person who answered the company’s phone Monday afternoon declined to answer a reporter’s questions and ended the call with “no comment.”
Flight tracking site FlightAware shows the plane made four more round trips to Jamaica last week, traveling between George Town and Montego Bay in the Cayman Islands and Negril in Jamaica, before landing in Fort Lauderdale on Friday. It was not immediately clear who organized the trips.
Hurricane Melissa reached Jamaica on October 28, becoming the strongest Atlantic hurricane in history. The storm also caused devastation in Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, prompting aid agencies to take action.
Local government officials in Jamaica said in the days after the storm that Melissa ripped the roofs off 120,000 structures, affecting about 90,000 families in the island’s particularly hard-hit western region. A week after Melissa arrived in Jamaica, more than 2,000 people were reportedly still in shelters.
