Two people aboard a single-engine plane were killed when the aircraft crashed into an apartment building in Keene on Friday, causing a large fire, officials said.
Officials have not yet identified the two people who died in the crash. The building struck by the plane housed eight residents, none of whom were injured.
It’s not yet clear what caused the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board is leading an investigation into the incident, and local officials have pledged to cooperate with that review.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the plane involved was a single-engine Beechcraft Sierra. The four-seat aircraft had just taken off from Keene’s Dillant-Hopkins Airport, located about half a mile away in nearby Swanzey. It struck a garage attached to a four-unit apartment complex on Lower Main Street in Keene.
The crash occurred a little before 7 p.m. Friday in a stretch of commercial buildings, apartments and single-family homes south of Keene’s downtown. The apartment building shares a parking lot with a church.
Keene Mayor George Hansel said at a news conference Saturday that it could have been much worse.
“I think we’re very fortunate,” he said. “I mean, the fact that it hit a building where eight people were living, and none of those people were injured, is an important detail.”
Hansel praised the rapid response of firefighters from Keene and neighboring towns, who extinguished the fire before 9 p.m.
Keene Fire Chief Donald Farquhar said the building will remain unoccupied until there’s a full assessment of the damage. The Red Cross is helping the residents relocate.
Owned and operated by the city of Keene, Dillant-Hopkins Airport has no commercial airline service but handles recreational flights and private corporate travel.
Hansel said the plane that crashed was owned by Monadnock Aviation, a local flight school and rental company. A call to the company Saturday was not answered.
Hansel said it’s too early to say what caused the crash, but the city will work with investigators and release more information as it becomes available.
“We're very interested and committed to finding out exactly what happened here,” he said.
On Saturday morning, yellow caution tape stretched around the apartment building, less than a mile from the airport. The front appeared mostly intact, but the back showed significant fire damage and the attached garage was completely destroyed.
Jon Mason lives a few hundred feet away. He said he rushed outside Friday night after hearing a plane fly overhead, a couple of pops and something crashing into a metal roof.
“It was completely erupted,” he said. “People were yelling, ‘Get out of the house! Get out of the house!’ ”
A video he took shows the garage’s roof engulfed in flames. “It was just a big inferno,” he said.
