Three killed as US fighter jet smashes into homes
A US fighter jet returning to a Marine base made famous by the film Top Gun crashed in flames, killing three people on the ground, leaving one missing and destroying two homes.
The pilot of the F-18 Hornet ejected safely just before the crash yesterday at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, California. Explosions rocked the middle-class University City neighbourhood of San Diego, sending flames and plumes of smoke skyward.
“The house shook; the ground shook. It was like I was frozen in my place,” said Steve Krasner, who lives a few streets 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. No names have been released.
Another person remained missing, but a search through the debris of the two destroyed homes was suspended today and expected to resume later, police said.
The pilot, who ended up hanging by his parachute from a tree in a canyon beneath the neighbourhood, was in stable condition at a naval hospital in San Diego, said Miramar spokeswoman First Lt 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.
She said investigators would review information from a flight data recorder. There was no indication the pilot was using alcohol or drugs, she added.
Authorities said smoke rising from the wreckage was toxic and evacuated about 20 homes. Residents of all but four were allowed back early today.
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 van. A parachute was visible in the canyon below a row of houses.
The area 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.
Jets frequently streak over the neighbourhood, two miles from the base, but residents said the doomed aircraft was flying extremely low.
Jordan Houston was looking out his back window three streets from the crash when the plane passed by. A parachute ejected from the craft, followed by a loud explosion and a mushroom-shaped cloud.
Mr Houston, 25, said a lorry exploded after the driver reversed over flaming debris and then jumped from the cab yelling: “I just filled up my gas tank.”
The Marine Corps said the pilot was part of the Fighter Attack Training Squadron 101, based at Miramar.
An F-18, a supersonic jet used widely in the Marine Corps and Navy and by the stunt-flying Blue Angels, costs about £38 million. An F-18 crashed at Miramar, the setting for Top Gun, in November 2006, and that pilot also ejected safely.
The crash was near University City High School, where pupils were kept locked in classrooms after the crash.
