PORT WENTWORTH, Ga. – An Air National Guard C-130 cargo plane crashed Wednesday onto a busy highway moments after taking off from a Georgia airport, killing nine National Guard members from Puerto Rico, authorities said. The top official of the Puerto Rico Air National Guard, Adjutant Gen. Isabelo Rivero confirmed there were no survivors. The plane narrowly missed people on the ground.
Black smoke rose into the sky after the plane crashed into a median on the road outside Savannah, Georgia, around 11:30 a.m. local time. Firefighters later put out the blaze.
A driver on a nearby road saw the plane plummet to the ground, CBS News correspondent Laura Podesta reports.
“Right when it came over a set of trees there, I saw it do a roll upside down,” Jimmy Livingston said. “When it rolled upside down, it did a complete straight turn into the ground.”
An aerial view shows the crash site in Georgia on Wed., May 2, 2018.
CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann reports that this particular C-130 was one of the oldest still flying. The pilot was heading to Tucson, Arizona, to retire the aircraft. After take off earlier Wednesday, it was in the air for about two miles before it crashed.
The one involved in Wednesday’s crash was more than 60 years old.
“The planes that we have in Puerto Rico — it’s not news today that they are the oldest planes on inventory” of all National Guard planes nationwide, Rivera said. Puerto Rico’s National Guard has five other similar planes, two of which need maintenance and aren’t being used, he said.
It’s too early to say what might have caused the accident, he said. The plane last received maintenance at the base in Savannah in April.
All nine crew members had helped with hurricane recovery efforts as part of the 198th Fighter Squadron, nicknamed the Bucaneros, which flies out of Base Muniz in the northern coastal city of Carolina, Rivera said.
“This pains us,” Rivera said of the deaths. They aren’t releasing names until all the families have been contacted, but “most of them already know and have come to the base.”
Rivero said in a Wednesday evening press conference that the C-130 has been used in the past to rescue U.S. citizens stranded in the British Virgin Islands following Hurricane Irma and to ferry supplies to the territory of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria last year.
The huge plane’s fuselage appeared to have struck the median, and pieces of its 132-foot wingspan were scattered across lanes in both directions. The only part still intact was the tail section, said Chris Hanks, a spokesman for the Savannah Professional Firefighters Association.
“It miraculously did not hit any cars, any homes,” Effingham County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Gena Bilbo said. “This is a very busy roadway.”
Eight hours after the crash, she added: “To our knowledge there are no survivors.”
The military plane crash site is seen in Savannah, Georgia, on May 2, 2018, in this picture obtained from social media.
Senior Master Sgt. Roger Parsons of the Georgia Air National Guard told reporters the cause of the crash was unknown and authorities were still working to make the crash site safe for investigators.
“Any information about what caused this or any facts about the aircraft will come out in the investigation,” he said.
The plane had just taken off from the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport when it crashed, Parsons said.
The Air Force said the plane belonged to the 156th Air Wing out of Puerto Rico, and Puerto Rico National Guard spokesman Maj. Paul Dahlen told The Associated Press that all those aboard were Puerto Ricans who had recently left the U.S. territory for a training mission on the U.S. mainland.
Surveillance video obtained by CBS News from Meadowbrook Leasing LLC shows the plane falling from the sky.
C-130 caught on video (red circle) moments before it crashed in Ga., on Wed., May 2, 2018.
Dahlen said initial information indicated there were five to nine people aboard the plane, which was heading to Arizona. He did not have details on the mission.
“We are saddened by the plane accident that occurred today in Georgia,” Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello said in a tweet. “Our prayers are with the families of the Puerto Rican crew.”
President Trump tweeted that he had been briefed on the crash, sending “thoughts and prayers for the victims, their families and the great men and women of the National Guard.”
I have been briefed on the U.S. C-130 “Hercules” cargo plane from the Puerto Rico National Guard that crashed near Savannah Hilton Head International Airport. Please join me in thoughts and prayers for the victims, their families and the great men and women of the National Guard.
The plane crashed onto state highway Georgia 21, about a mile from the airport, said Gena Bilbo, a spokeswoman for the Effingham County Sherriff’s Office.
“It miraculously did not hit any cars, any homes,” Bilbo said. “This is a very busy roadway.”
The crash caused a big orange and black fireball and scattered debris over a large area, Bilbo said.
Motorist Mark Jones told the Savannah Morning News that he saw the plane hit the ground right in front of him.
“It didn’t look like it nosedived, but it almost looked like it stalled and just went almost flat right there in the middle of the highway,” Jones said, describing how people stopped and got out of their cars following the explosion.
“I’m still shook up and shaking. My stomach is in knots because I know they’re people just like me. I wasn’t that far from it and I could have just kept going and it would have been me and we wouldn’t be talking right now,” Jones said.
A photo tweeted by the Savannah Professional Firefighters Association shows the tail end of a plane and a field of flames and black smoke as an ambulance stood nearby.
Savannah’s Air National Guard base has been heavily involved in hurricane recovery efforts in Puerto Rico. In September 2017, it was designated by the Air National Guard as the hub of operations to the island in the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria, the base announced at the time.
By early afternoon, Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport said on social media that flights were arriving and departing with minimal delays. It advised motorists that they may need to seek an alternate route to the airport.
Flights are arriving and departing at this time with minimal delays. If you’re traveling to the airport via Highway 21 and Gulfstream Road from Savannah you will need to seek an alternate route.
A standoff between law enforcement and a barricaded man led to a series of explosions that set a property ablaze Wednesday night in a quiet, residential suburb near New Haven, Conn.
For several days, the barricaded man had been holding his wife hostage in their home in North Haven, about five miles from the Yale University campus, according to a town official, North Haven First Selectman Michael Freda. When authorities learned of a domestic disturbance at the home, police officers and a SWAT team spent hours trying to “coax very gently and compassionately” the man out of the house, Freda said.
Police did not release the names of the couple.
While the SWAT team negotiated with the suspect, police officers searched the surrounding areas of the property, including a barn behind the house. Their entry into the barn set off a loud explosion that shook the neighborhood and could be felt from several blocks away. Other explosions followed, leading authorities to conclude the barn could have been outfitted with booby traps.
As many as eight officers were injured, Jonathan R. Mulhern, deputy chief of the North Haven Police Department, told reporters. The injuries included cuts, abrasions and concussions, but none were life-threatening, Freda said. Several officers were transported to Yale New Haven Hospital, which confirmed on Twitter it received seven patients involved in the explosions.
The explosions caused the barn to erupt into flames. The blaze soon enveloped the house itself and sent smoke billowing into the night sky.
“North Haven shook. I mean everyone heard it,” Nancy Sundwall, who could see the flames from a nearby road, told the New Haven Register. “The whole sky turned pitch black with smoke.”
Freda said he believed the wife managed to escape from the house before the fire, but he could not confirm her condition. It was unclear whether the man was inside the barn or house when the fire spread, but Connecticut State Police Trooper Kelly Grant told reporters the man was not in police custody as of about 2 a.m. Thursday. She urged residents to stay in their homes while authorities attempted to locate the suspect.
Law enforcement sources told the Hartford Courant the man’s wife had been severely beaten, and was being treated at a hospital. She filed for divorce last month, the Courant reported. Authorities could not say if there were children in the house.
A neighbor told WTNH police officers could be heard negotiating with the man over a loudspeaker, saying “John, please come to the window, please show yourself, we are here to help.”
At about 2 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, hours before the standoff, a woman arrived at the North Haven Police Department complaining about a domestic disturbance at the home on Quinnipiac Ave. The complaint spurred authorities to descend on the home and attempt to negotiate with the man, who was barricading himself and his wife inside the house.
“I don’t really know much about the suspect,” Freda said. “We’ve never really had any issues from what I understand.” He added that “something triggered the event today,” which he called a “chaotic tragedy.”
The massive fire, along with the dozens of firefighters and police officers on the street, disrupted an otherwise quiet neighborhood. Footage from local news stations shows officers lying in stretchers being loaded into ambulances. The fire continued to burn early Thursday, and fire officials told the Associated Press that power was out in the area. A local firehouse had been set up as a “refuge” for residents without power.
“We don’t usually see these situations here in town,” Freda told reporters, saying the most chaotic scenes he’s witnessed in his nearly nine years in office occur during hurricanes and storms.
But, he said, “wherever there are people there seems to be a high level of tension out there in today’s society, maybe a degree of mental illness, and sometimes the manifestation of that turns into what we saw here today.”
“I’m tremendously grateful that there were no fatalities,” Freda also said.
Concerned residents in the surrounding area took to the North Haven Police Department’s Facebook page, asking one another what the loud boom might have been.
“Did anyone just hear a loud explosion?” Kristina Canning wrote. “My whole house just shook.”
One local said “our house shook all the way across town.” Another said she thought her house “was going to fall apart … windows shook … pups scared to death and now 2 more explosions!”
Neighbor John Marotto told the Hartford Courant that after the blast, he saw a group of people get “blown away” from the barn, “and then the roof was gone.”
“I heard them screaming,” Marotto said. “The side facing our house was totally gone. It was unbelievable — the noise, unbelievable. I thought I was in a war zone.”
Another neighbor told WTNH his family had just finished eating dinner when they heard the explosion.
“It knocked my wife to the floor,” the neighbor told the news station. “I huddled my family into the bedroom, locked the door, and came out to see what was going on. You could see the house was fully engulfed.”
From her home a mile away, North Haven resident Joan Mazurek thought she heard a train. It was the blast.
“Then we heard all the, oh my God, all the ambulances and fire engines. The noise from all the emergency vehicles was unbelievable,” she told the AP. “It’s a shock. Nothing ever happens like this in North Haven.”
