3 dead in small-plane crash in East Palo Alto
Jill Tucker, Henry K. Lee, Trapper Byrne,Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
(02-17) 10:40 PST EAST PALO ALTO -- A small plane crashed this morning in a residential neighborhood in East Palo Alto, killing three people onboard, authorities said.
The plane crashed on the 1200 block of Beech Street near Pulgas Avenue about 7:55 a.m., said Lt. Ray Lunny of the San Mateo County Sheriff's Department. A house on the street was damaged and the plane destroyed three cars, Lunny said, but there were no reports of injuries on the ground.
Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said the plane was a twin-engine Cessna 310 that had taken off from Palo Alto Airport, about a mile to the southwest, and was bound for Hawthorne Municipal Airport in Los Angeles County.
The plane was owned by Doug Bourn, a senior electrical engineer for Tesla Motors, the electric-car company said. It was not known whether Bourn was onboard.
The cause of the crash was not known, but there were reports that the plane hit an electrical tower or wires on takeoff. There was also thick fog where the plane crashed.
There was one loud boom followed by a second that shook nearby houses, said neighbor Annie Bracksher, who lives four houses away from the crash site.
She said a wing of the plane fell off and hit the back of a house, which operates as a day- care center. One child was reportedly in the house, but no one was injured, Bracksher said. The rest of the plane then crashed into a pickup truck in the street and burst into flames.
Neighbor Karen Ramirez, 18, said she had just changed her infant daughter's diaper and was about to feed her when she saw flames outside her home. Two seconds later, "the whole house shook. It sounded like thunder," she said. Ramirez said she thought the house next door "blew up."
The fuselage of the plane landed on two trucks owned by her father-in-law, causing both to burst into flames, Ramirez said. One of the trucks is "completely totaled," she said.
Firefighters extinguished the flames within 20 to 30 minutes, Bracksher said.
Power outages were reported in the immediate area as well as in neighboring Palo Alto. Palo Alto officials said major outages were affecting the city and that residents were being asked to conserve water while power is out. Water transmission relies on electrical power and Palo Alto has limited reserves in the water system, city officials said.
Palo Alto's electricity system is municipally owned. Joe Molica, a spokesman for Pacific Gas and Electric Co., said none of the utility's customers was affected but that the crash had damaged three transmission lines that feed into Palo Alto's system.
David Rages, who lives on the 1000 block of Beech Street about a block from the crash site, said small planes fly over the neighborhood all the time. He said he's always had a nagging fear of a plane going down in the area.
"I always worry about that," he said.
