Small plane crashes into Steamboat Springs mobile home park in Colorado, killing 2 onboard
A small plane crashed into a mobile home park in the Colorado mountain town of Steamboat Springs on Monday and the crash killed the two onboard occupants. That's according to the Routt County Coroner's Office, which said the victims were a man and a woman. Officials with Steamboat Springs Fire Rescue said no one in the mobile park was killed.
The twin-engine Cessna 421 hit two mobile homes at 4:23 p.m. and started a fire in the small Routt County community that also spread to outbuildings.
After the plane hit, people in West Acres trailer park scrambled to get away from the smoke and flames.
Two kids who live in the neighborhood shared what they saw in the first frightening moments after the plane came down.
"I just heard this explosion. And went outside and I saw flames," said Jose Alegria.
"And I just hear boom. Everything around us just shakes and there's screaming. There's people screaming," said Beyonce Alegria.
Then others rushed in to try and help. Jae Seifert and his friend Mike McGlone drove up to the park fearing the plane had come down in another nearby neighborhood where McGlone's children live. They were among those trying to find out if people were trapped in their homes.
"People were coming out of their houses with fire extinguishers, buckets of water and stuff. I think trying to help," said Seifert. "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."
The fire was just too intense.
"It was too flamed and too hot within fifty feet of any of those structures to get any closer," said McGlone.
Police in Steamboat Springs established a call line for concerned family members who were unsure about if their relatives were safe, but after a few hours they said everyone who lives in the mobile home park is accounted for.
The National Transportation Safety Board said they will investigate the crash. According to FlightAware, the plane left from Ogden, Utah, and then landed at Vance Brand Airport in Longmont, Colorado. It then left from Longmont and was en route to Steamboat Springs when it crashed.
"We both just looked up and there was a plane in a flat spin," said Seifert, who was visiting McGlone at Westside Auto, when they spotted the plane in trouble.
"I heard it before it came into sight," said McGlone. "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 said.
The Routt County Office of Emergency Management is helping residents of the park who are impacted by the crash.
West Acres trailer park is located near the Steamboat Springs Airport. The airport is located a little over 2 miles to the northwest of the ski town's downtown area. It only services private operations. Commercial flights land at the Yampa Valley Regional Airport, which is 28 miles west of downtown.
This is at least the third small plane crash in Colorado this month. On Sunday, a plane attempted to make an emergency landing on Interstate 25 and crashed near a creekbed in the Larskspur area. And a crash in Arvada on June 7 killed a mother who was aboard a plane when it landed in someone's front yard.