13 killed as plane crashes into school
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-Pastor-Dale-Morgan-
Dec 10, 2011, 3:46:21 PM12/10/11
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13 killed as plane crashes into school
AP
December 10, 2011 11:03PM
Firefighters try to extinguish a fire from burning houses after a light plane crashed into a nearby school. PicturE: AP
A LIGHT airplane crashed into a school building, killing 13 people including three children after its pilot requested an emergency landing.
Charred bodies lay amid the twisted wreckage of burned slum homes as firefighters cleared away blackened sheets of corrugated iron.
The plane burst into flames after hitting the school, said Mayor Florencio Bernabe of suburban Paranaque city in the Philippines.
No classes were in session when the plane hit, but officials were determining how many on the ground were injured or killed, he said.
Firefighters reported that the bodies were charred and that the dead included the pilot and the co-pilot - the only two people on the plane, Bernabe said.
Police Senior Inspector Dennis Sirilan said the fire spread rapidly to nearby shanties that surround the school after the twin-engine plane crashed.
Sirilan said he saw the aircraft "twirling" in the air before it slammed into the F. Serrano Elementary School, which was severely damaged by the fire.
Firefighters were hampered in quickly reaching the scene by the narrow streets in the community. The area was still smouldering after the fire was brought under control about three hours later.
Police chief inspector Enrique Sy said many of the fatalities were residents of the shanty town.
"The plane struck one house but the others also went up in flames. These are informal settlers, packed into rows of houses," Sy told reporters.
Philippine Red Cross Secretary General Gwen Pang said the dead included an infant and a child.
The blaze engulfed a nearby elementary school, but Pang said it was empty at the time because it was a weekend.
She said at least 10 people were brought to a hospital, including five with major burns.
Civil Aviation Authority chief Ramon Gutierrez said the six-to-eight-seat Beechcraft Queen Air plane sent out a distress call shortly after taking off from Manila for Mindoro Island. The plane crashed before it was able to return to the airport.
Rogen Rodriguez, a police officer detailed at Manila airport, rushed home to help rescue neighbours from the fire, unaware that his sister, Maricel Garado, was among the dead.
"She had just stepped out of her house to look for her child outside. Part of the wreckage from the exploding plane struck her (the mother) and she was killed," Rodriguez told AFP.
"People first noticed the plane circling overhead. Then there was an explosion, it veered to one side and crashed," Rodriguez's bus driver brother-in-law Manuel Boton told AFP.
Resident Maribel Savedoria tearfully recounted on local radio how her husband perished in the blaze after pushing her and their four children out through the window of their rented room.
"He pushed all of us out to save us, but he did not make it. There was an explosion and all my children sustained burns," she told DZBB radio.
Florencio Bernabe, the mayor of Paranaque district where the crash occurred, said that at least 50 shanties burned down and at least 20 other injured victims had been taken to hospital.
An AFP photographer on the scene said the fire gutted a 2,000-square-metre (half-acre) section of the slum that stood either side of an open sewer.
Ramon Gutierrez, head of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, told DZBB radio that the pilot had asked to be allowed to make an emergency landing back at Manila airport shortly after take-off.
"Unfortunately, the plane did not make it," he said, adding that the cause of the crash was not immediately known.
He said the plane, scheduled to pick up cargo from the nearby island of Mindoro, would have been carrying a full tank of fuel when it crashed.
Deadly slum fires are common in the Philippines, where years of unabated migration from rural areas has led to the proliferation of sprawling shanty towns.
More than 2.5 million people - nearly a quarter of Manila's population - now live in slums, according to the government's Metropolitan Manila Development Authority.
Firefighting in the warren of tiny alleyways that make up many slums is hampered by difficult access.
Up to 30,000 people lost their homes in successive slum fires in Manila in February, while in January, 12 people, most of them children, were killed when a fire razed an impoverished coastal area.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world/blaze-erupts-after-plane-crashes-into-school/story-e6frfkyi-1226219049427#ixzz1gAOnFRkf
13 killed as plane crashes into school
AP
December 10, 2011 11:03PM
Firefighters try to extinguish a fire from burning houses after a light plane crashed into a nearby school. PicturE: AP
A LIGHT airplane crashed into a school building, killing 13 people including three children after its pilot requested an emergency landing.
Charred bodies lay amid the twisted wreckage of burned slum homes as firefighters cleared away blackened sheets of corrugated iron.
The plane burst into flames after hitting the school, said Mayor Florencio Bernabe of suburban Paranaque city in the Philippines.
No classes were in session when the plane hit, but officials were determining how many on the ground were injured or killed, he said.
Firefighters reported that the bodies were charred and that the dead included the pilot and the co-pilot - the only two people on the plane, Bernabe said.
Police Senior Inspector Dennis Sirilan said the fire spread rapidly to nearby shanties that surround the school after the twin-engine plane crashed.
Sirilan said he saw the aircraft "twirling" in the air before it slammed into the F. Serrano Elementary School, which was severely damaged by the fire.
Firefighters were hampered in quickly reaching the scene by the narrow streets in the community. The area was still smouldering after the fire was brought under control about three hours later.
Police chief inspector Enrique Sy said many of the fatalities were residents of the shanty town.
"The plane struck one house but the others also went up in flames. These are informal settlers, packed into rows of houses," Sy told reporters.
Philippine Red Cross Secretary General Gwen Pang said the dead included an infant and a child.
The blaze engulfed a nearby elementary school, but Pang said it was empty at the time because it was a weekend.
She said at least 10 people were brought to a hospital, including five with major burns.
Civil Aviation Authority chief Ramon Gutierrez said the six-to-eight-seat Beechcraft Queen Air plane sent out a distress call shortly after taking off from Manila for Mindoro Island. The plane crashed before it was able to return to the airport.
Rogen Rodriguez, a police officer detailed at Manila airport, rushed home to help rescue neighbours from the fire, unaware that his sister, Maricel Garado, was among the dead.
"She had just stepped out of her house to look for her child outside. Part of the wreckage from the exploding plane struck her (the mother) and she was killed," Rodriguez told AFP.
"People first noticed the plane circling overhead. Then there was an explosion, it veered to one side and crashed," Rodriguez's bus driver brother-in-law Manuel Boton told AFP.
Resident Maribel Savedoria tearfully recounted on local radio how her husband perished in the blaze after pushing her and their four children out through the window of their rented room.
"He pushed all of us out to save us, but he did not make it. There was an explosion and all my children sustained burns," she told DZBB radio.
Florencio Bernabe, the mayor of Paranaque district where the crash occurred, said that at least 50 shanties burned down and at least 20 other injured victims had been taken to hospital.
An AFP photographer on the scene said the fire gutted a 2,000-square-metre (half-acre) section of the slum that stood either side of an open sewer.
Ramon Gutierrez, head of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, told DZBB radio that the pilot had asked to be allowed to make an emergency landing back at Manila airport shortly after take-off.
"Unfortunately, the plane did not make it," he said, adding that the cause of the crash was not immediately known.
He said the plane, scheduled to pick up cargo from the nearby island of Mindoro, would have been carrying a full tank of fuel when it crashed.
Deadly slum fires are common in the Philippines, where years of unabated migration from rural areas has led to the proliferation of sprawling shanty towns.
More than 2.5 million people - nearly a quarter of Manila's population - now live in slums, according to the government's Metropolitan Manila Development Authority.
Firefighting in the warren of tiny alleyways that make up many slums is hampered by difficult access.
Up to 30,000 people lost their homes in successive slum fires in Manila in February, while in January, 12 people, most of them children, were killed when a fire razed an impoverished coastal area.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world/blaze-erupts-after-plane-crashes-into-school/story-e6frfkyi-1226219049427#ixzz1gAOnFRkf
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