A fighter jet returning to a Marine base after a training exercise crashed in flames in a San Diego neighborhood, killing three people on the ground, leaving one missing and destroying two homes.
The pilot of the F/A-18D Hornet jet ejected safely just before the crash around noon on Monday at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.
Explosions rocked a neighborhood of half-million-dollar homes, sending flames and plumes of smoke skyward.
PHOTO: AP
“The house shook; the ground shook. It was like I was frozen in my place,” said Steve Krasner, who lives a few blocks from the crash. “It was bigger than any earthquake I ever felt.”
Three people were killed in a house where two children, a mother and a grandmother were believed to be at the time of the crash, but fire officials did not immediately know who died.
Another person was missing.
“We just know that four people were inside, and three of them have been accounted for,” Fire Department spokesman Maurice Luque said.
The pilot, who ended up hanging by his parachute from a tree in a canyon beneath the neighborhood, was in stable condition at a naval hospital in San Diego, said Miramar spokeswoman 1st Lieutenant Katheryn Putnam. The pilot was returning from training on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the San Diego coast when the plane went down, she said.
Putnam had no details on a possible cause.
The Navy recently inspected hundreds of F/A-18 Hornets built by Boeing Co after discovering “fatigue cracks” on more than a dozen aircraft.
The Navy announced last month it had grounded 10 of the jets and placed flight restrictions on another 20 until repairs could be made.
The inspectors checked the Hornets for cracks in a hinge that connects the aileron — flaps that help stabilize the jet in flight — to the wing.
Authorities said smoke rising from the wreckage was toxic and evacuated about 20 homes. By Monday night only six homes remained evacuated because they were uninhabitable, San Diego police spokeswoman Monica Munoz said.
There was little sign of the plane in the smoking ruins, but a piece of cockpit sat on the roof of one home, and a charred jet engine lay on a street near a parked camper. A parachute was visible in the canyon below a row of houses.
The neighborhood in the University City section of San Diego smelled of jet fuel and smoke. Ambulances, fire trucks and police cars choked the streets. A Marine Corps bomb disposal truck was there, although police assured residents there was no ordnance aboard the jet.
Neighbors described chaos after the jet tore into the houses and flames erupted.
“It was pandemonium,” said Paulette Glauser, 49, who lived six houses away. “Neighbors were running down toward us in a panic, of course.”
Jets frequently streak over the neighborhood, 3km from the base, but residents said the imperiled aircraft was flying extremely low.
Jordan Houston was looking out his back window three blocks from the crash when the plane passed by. A parachute ejected from the craft, followed by a loud explosion and a mushroom-shaped cloud.
“It was quite violent,” said Ben Dishman, 55, who was resting on his couch after having back surgery. “I hear the jets from Miramar all the time. I often worry that one of them will hit one of these homes. It was inevitable. I feel very lucky.”
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