Small plane crashes into San Diego neighbourhood, setting home and vehicles on fire

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A small plane crashed into a San Diego neighbourhood during foggy weather early Thursday, setting about 15 homes on fire as well as vehicles, and forcing evacuations along several blocks, authorities said.

“We have jet fuel all over the place,” Assistant Fire Department Chief Dan Eddy said during a news conference.

“Our main goal is to search all these homes and get everybody out right now.”

He said “there is a direct hit to multiple homes” in the Murphy Canyon neighbourhood and described “a gigantic debris field” in an area of densely populated homes and sweeping canyon views.

Multiple people on board the private plane are dead.

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Eddy said during the news conference that they will be investigating whether the plane hit a power line.

No one on the ground was injured, he said.

San Diego police and fire officials said the plane could hold eight to 10 people but they do not yet know how many were on board.

“When it hit the street, as the jet fuel went down it took out every single car that was on both sides of the street,” Eddy said.

“You can see that every singe car was burning down both sides of the street.”

San Diego officials haven’t released details about the plane that crashed but said it was a flight coming in from the Midwest.

The flight tracking site Flight Aware lists a Cessna Citation II jet that was scheduled to arrive at the Montgomery-Gibbs Executive airport in San Diego at 3:47 a.m. from the small Colonel James Jabara Airport in Wichita, Kansas.