A small plane crashed into a mobile home park Monday in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, leaving two dead, officials say.
The incident occurred at around 4:23 p.m. Monday, the Steamboat Springs Fire Rescue (SSFR) said on Facebook.
“Two people, the pilot and a passenger, were confirmed to have died in the plane crash this afternoon in the West Acres Mobile Park,” SSFR said. Their identities have not been released pending notifying the next of kin.
The twin-engine Cessna 421 airplane was believed to be leaving from Longmont, Colorado and heading to Ogden, Utah, according to SSFR. The plane crashed into the West Acres Mobile Park, roughly a mile and a half away from the Steamboat Springs Airport.
Both on and off-duty personnel responded to the incident, working to extinguish two homes and outbuildings that caught on fire following the crash, the press release notes.
All residents in the mobile park were accounted for following the incident, officials said. (RELATED: Dramatic Video Shows Seaplane Plow Into Boat, Injuring Two).
“And I just hear boom. Everything around us just shakes and there’s screaming. There’s people screaming,” Beyonce Alegria, a neighbor who witnessed the event, told CBS News.
Jae Seifert and Mike McGlone witnessed the event and rushed to help anyone trapped inside their homes, CBS News reported.
“People were coming out of their houses with fire extinguishers, buckets of water and stuff. I think trying to help,” Seifert told CBS News. “We ran up to the two doors of the units of the mobile homes that were on fire, tried to scream inside, seeing if anybody was in there, any pets, anything like that. And tried until we couldn’t stand the heat anymore.”
Seifert and McGlone said they spotted the plane having issues before the fatal crash, the outlet reported.
“I heard it before it came into sight,” McGlone told CBS. “It was spinning full circles and one of the engines was definitely out.”
“So essentially the plane was not really making a real lot of forward momentum but was basically rotating 360 degrees. Almost stationary, which was pretty bizarre,” Seifert added.
The cause of the crash remains under investigation, officials said.
