5 taken to the hospital after a plane crashes near a retirement community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
The plane, a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza, crashed around 3:18 p.m. ET on the property of Brethren Village retirement community in Manheim Township, Scott Little, the chief of Manheim Township Fire, said at a Sunday evening news conference. Five people were on board and were transported to local hospitals, according to Little.
About a dozen cars were damaged, five 'severely,' officials said. There was no structural damage to the retirement community building and no one on the ground was injured, Little said.
Video of the scene shows the wreckage of the plane engulfed in flames and dark smoke. The fire has since been put out using 'copious amounts of water,' according to Little.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it will investigate the crash, which comes after a devastating midair collision in January and a string of plane crashes across the country. In Philadelphia, all six passengers and one person on the ground were killed when a medical evacuation jet crashed on January 31.
The National Transportation Safety Board told CNN it is also opening an investigation and will evaluate the documentation and initial examination gathered by FAA investigators at the crash site.
The pilot reported the plane had an open door, in a radio conversation with an air traffic controller. The controller instructed the pilot to 'pull up' moments before the crash.
The plane was scheduled to depart from Lancaster Airport, just north of the crash site and was headed toward Springfield, Ohio, according to FlightAware.
Pennsylvania State Police are 'on the ground assisting local first responders,' Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a post on X. The governor added that, 'All Commonwealth resources are available as the response continues.'
One witness said the plane crashed shortly after takeoff.
'It was pretty high, but then it started veering left, and suddenly it nose-dived sideways while continuing to turn left,' Brian Pipkin told CNN.
Pipkin said he rushed to the parking lot of the retirement center, where he saw the cockpit of the plane engulfed in flames.
He described the intense heat as 'feeling like opening an oven set to 500 degrees when you open the door and it hits your face.'
'It was so hot,' he said. 'I was getting closer, praying to God that nothing would blow up.'
CNN has reached out to Pennsylvania State Police and Manheim Township Fire and Rescue for more information.
This story has been updated with additional information.
CNN's Aaron Cooper and Amanda Jackson contributed to this report.
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CNN
2 days ago
- CNN
Just two Navajo Code Talkers remain alive. Here's what they want America to know
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'I asked: where can I get one of those beautiful uniforms you're wearing?' he told CNN. MacDonald was told he'd need to enlist with the Marines. But there was a problem: he was only 15, two years below the age requirement. That didn't deter him. 'We've been carrying rifles since we were 7 or 8 years old,' he said, telling his fellow clan member: 'We shoot rabbits, we shoot squirrels, we shoot birds, and sometimes I'm a better shot than you.' MacDonald lied about his age and enlisted. He told CNN that on his visit to the enrollment office, he said: 'I don't want the Japanese to ever come here to Window Rock, Arizona.' 'We had seen enough of (that) stuff before, and we don't like it,' he told CNN. 'This is our land and we're going to protect it.' There was an irony to his eagerness. Native people had been full American citizens for just two decades, but they still didn't have the right to vote. 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In many cases, they were forced to invent new words altogether, because Navajo didn't contain direct translations. When Code Talkers were deployed in battle they were assigned Marine escorts for protection after multiple Code Talkers were mistaken for Japanese soldiers and confronted by US troops. 'A lot of times we were mistaken for Japanese,' Chester Nez, a Code Talker who died in 2014, said in an oral history interview for the Library of Congress. Nez recalled being stopped by a Marine while walking back to camp with a fellow Code Talker on the island of Guadalcanal in 1942. Nez, barred from disclosing any information about the Code Talker program even to fellow Marines, said the pair were telephone operators. 'He didn't believe us,' Nez said 'This guy took a .45 and stuck it in my head and my body … that was the most scary thing that happened to me.' Code Talkers spoke into their hefty radios when an instruction needed relaying. For example, MacDonald explained that on Iwo Jima, a message needed to be sent to headquarters: 'Send demolition team to hill 362B.' The message that was transmitted over radio was: 'Sheep. Eyes. Nose. Deer. Destroyer. Tea. Mouse. Turkey. Onion. Sick horse. Three. Six. Two. Bear.' In all, more than 800 messages were sent between Code Talkers at Iwo Jima. Begay was one of those on the island, and he remembers how he felt when he saw an American flag raised on Mount Suribachi. It had been hoisted by six Marines days earlier, a moment captured in an iconic photograph by the Associated Press photojournalist Joe Rosenthal. 'My God,' he said. 'I was so proud.' When MacDonald and Begay returned to the US after the war, they were sworn to secrecy. The code talker program remained classified until 1968, in case the military should ever need to reactivate it. For the Navajo who powered the program, that meant returning to their pre-war lives, excluded from the heroes' welcome that many other returning soldiers received. 'We had really gotten used to being treated as a second-class citizen,' MacDonald said, adding his experience was 'no different' after his return. 'We were very much mistreated in America.' 'We were not rich at all,' he continued. 'We were just trying to survive. In the meantime, when you go into town, (non-Native) people make fun of you: people tell you … 'you don't sit there, you eat over there, you don't use this, you do that.'' Begay's son remembers the day the secret was lifted: his father came home and finally told his family what he had done during the war. 'Right away I started asking him questions at the dinner table,' said Ronald Begay, himself a veteran of the Army. 'I didn't know that, because it was never in the history books. I was proud of my dad.' Both men had long post-war careers. 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