| Associated Press
COLOMBIA, SC – A small plane crashed in a neighborhood amid dense fog and set fire to a house on Wednesday near an airport in the capital of South Carolina, officials said.
A woman inside the house apparently escaped the accident, although Columbia fire chief Aubrey Jenkins said she may have been scratched by her cats while trying to get them to safety.
There was no immediate word on the fate of the people on the plane.
The single-engine Beechcraft BE-33 crashed just before 11 am, about a mile from Jim Hamilton-LB Owens airport, which operates non-commercial planes in Columbia, officials said.
The plane hit nearby trees, then hit the roof of the house before it hit the ground, Jenkins said. The impact left a large hole in the roof of the house, and firefighters were able to control the fire in minutes, the department said.
Jenkins said he did not know if the plane was on fire before the accident.
Richland County coroner Naida Rutherford was at the scene in the Rosewood section of Columbia, but did not immediately say if anyone had died.
Columbia Police Chief Skip Holbrook asked all residents of the area to share personal images of home surveillance from security cameras that may have captured the accident.
Neighbor Amy Koon said the woman inside the house and the rest of the people in the community seemed to be fine. The woman had just finished renovating her home and was concerned with making sure her three cats had a safe place to stay, said Koon.
The neighborhood hears many planes flying overhead, she said.
“I get a lot of outdoors, you will hear airplanes and they will sound like they are starting to choke, and you will be thinking, ‘Oh God,'” said Koon, a longtime resident of the area. “But I just, even in my childhood, I never remember planes crashing here.”
The plane appeared to be trying to land at the airport and investigators did not immediately know where the flight originated from, said Jenkins.
Federal investigators were on their way to the crash site, officials said.
According to FlightAware, a 1973 five-seat Beechcraft BE-33 took off from an airport in downtown Greenville, SC, the previous Wednesday and was scheduled to arrive at Owens Field at 10:43 am.
FAA records show that, since 2006, the plane has been registered with Enviro-Tec Air LLC of Wilmington, Del.
According to NTSB records, the plane was involved in an incident in 2009, when one of the wings was damaged when the pilot failed to properly lower the landing gear at an airport in Rock Hill, SC, after a flight from Greenville.
The fog reduced visibility around the airport to 400 meters at the time of the accident, according to data from the National Meteorological Service.