A small plane with three people on board crashed in Ottawa west of the city airport on Thursday night.
It happened shortly before 6 PM in the Riverside Drive and West Hunt Club Road area. A photo shared by a resident showed a plane embedded in the trees.
Emergency services responded to 5:55 pm, according to the Ottawa paramedics service. A man and a woman were rescued from the plane and taken to the hospital in stable condition with injuries that do not endanger life.
Marc Antoine Deschamps, spokesman for the paramedic service, said emergency services took a significant effort to rescue these two people from the plane.
A third person remained on board and his condition could not yet be confirmed, he added.
The Canada Transport Security Board (TSB) said it has two researchers at the scene. The plane involved was a Grumman AA-5a registered in private, confirmed the agency.
The Fire Service of the Ottawa airport also responded to the accident and the operations at the airport remained normal, according to the Ottawa International Airport authority.
The residents listened, saw a clash
Greg Carter lives in a branch of Riverside Drive where the plane fell on the mountain. He said he went for a walk when the plane crashed about 30 meters behind him.
“I heard a strong clash, it sounded like a tree falling but a little more intense,” he said. “It was hung on the electric lines.”
He said he saw the arc electric line, blinking and making outbreak noises.
The lines were live at the time of the accident, firefighters confirmed, but Hydro Ottawa turned off the energy before the rescue began.
I wasn’t sure what the trees had hit him. But when he approached, he could see the plane suspended in the air.
“I could see inside the cabin and I could see a person in the right seat and a person in the back seat, but I couldn’t see the pilot’s seat,” he said.
Pablo Colles also lives near.
He saw the plane approaching the area at low altitude and called 911 as soon as he heard an explosion, which feared that the plane crashed into a neighbor’s house.
Coles ran to the street and saw instead that the plane was “hung on trees and electric lines.”
A lot of gasoline leaked from the scene, he said. The fire department said it was working to mitigate the accident spill of the accident to a nearby stream that leads to the Rideau River.
“We are applying that foam to the fuel where there is a runoff,” said Public Information Officer of the Fire Services of Ottawa, Nick Defazio.
Coles also saw the man be escorted by emergency workers of the plane.
“I am very sad for the people inside,” he said.
