A business jet careened at an angle along a dark highway, toppling light poles one after another as a trail of orange sparks lit up the night behind it.
At first, Ivan Franco assumed the wreckage in the distance was a car. But when he arrived in his tow truck, he realized it was an aircraft — snapped in two, its fuselage tipped onto its side, with flames beginning to build. Franco immediately searched through the emergency kit his company keeps in the truck, pulling out a sledgehammer and three fire extinguishers, which he passed to responding police officers.
“In that moment, you don’t really stop to think about what to do, because I knew the plane could explode since it was already on fire,” Franco told The Associated Press in Spanish. “What I wanted to do was break the windows because the pilots still hadn’t gotten out.”
Franco was among several drivers who came upon the crash in Laredo, Texas, late Tuesday and rushed in to help. In doing so, they put themselves at risk to help the people on board escape while smoke poured into the cabin.
Passersby played a crucial role in the rescue
Authorities said police reached the scene quickly, and that their coordinated response with the bystanders almost certainly helped save lives.
“The officers and the good Samaritans that went to the scene, our firefighters that responded — I do also want to commend each and every one of them,” Laredo Police Chief Mike Rodriguez said during a news conference Wednesday. He said he asked his staff to track down all the civilians who helped.
The Cessna Citation Latitude twin jet departed Tuesday evening from the Mexican resort city of San José del Cabo and was bound for Austin, Texas, the FAA said in a statement. The plane was operated by NetJets, a company owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway that lets people buy part ownership in private jets. NetJets said in a statement that it was cooperating with authorities.
The crash occurred after its pilots reported mechanical problems while requesting an emergency landing at a nearby airport. The fuselage came to rest across a concrete barrier, while its tail broke off and fell to a lower section of roadway.
One person was killed: Joshua Baer, a leader in Texas’ technology and startup sectors. Three teenage passengers and two pilots survived, as did a person in a truck struck by the plane as it crashed. Authorities have not released more detail about the passengers’ connections to one another.
Investigators combed through wreckage Wednesday for clues to the cause.
It was the third significant aviation accident in as many days in the U.S. A B-52 crashed Monday during a test flight at Edwards Air Force Base in California and killed all eight people aboard, while on Sunday, 12 people were killed when a plane on a skydiving outing in Missouri crashed.
‘It looked like part of a movie’
Among the motorists who stopped in Laredo was Zayra Garza, an esthetician who was driving her co-workers home when she saw the wreckage. She recorded video as her husband ran to help.
“It looked like part of a movie. I was in shock,” Garza said. Most worrisome was the fire: “I was concerned that it could have just exploded at any time.”
Garza saw people leave their cars to try to smash the cockpit glass. Her video shows the aircraft’s door popping open slightly from inside as a voice cries “Help! Help! Help!” The rescuers strain to lift the door farther open as the three teenagers dart out, followed quickly by one pilot and then by another.
Franco, a 23-year-old from Laredo, frantically swung the sledgehammer through heavy smoke. Others struck at the window with a shovel and tools from their own vehicles.
Cockpit windows are designed not to shatter
They accomplished little more than spiderwebbing the cockpit window with small cracks: Airplane windshields have multiple layers of glass and are designed to remain structurally sound even if the outer layer shatters. The windows must be able to withstand a bird strike at cruising speed and hold up to extreme pressure differences at high altitudes.
“They are basically bulletproof,” said retired airline pilot John Cox, who is CEO of Safety Operating Systems.
Police officers tried to remove the final person inside — Baer — as the smoke grew thicker. Officers doubled over coughing after turning away from the smoke.
Eventually firefighters with oxygen masks were able to get inside.
Firefighters also removed a dog from the plane that was suffering from smoke inhalation. The dog was turned over to animal control and was expected to survive, said Jose Baeza, an investigator with the Laredo Police Department.
Five officers were treated for smoke inhalation; the five people who survived the crash were also released from a hospital.
As the plane crashed on the northbound lanes of the highway, its wing hit a truck traveling southbound. The driver of that vehicle also survived, Baeza said.
There has been an outpouring of support on social media for those who stopped to help, heralding their bravery and selflessness.
Laredo Mayor Victor Treviño called it “nothing short of a miracle that this tragedy did not become a mass fatality event,” thanks in part to the late hour when the crash occurred and the quick action of first responders.
Franco said that as he tried to help, all he could think of was getting people out of the plane. But to do it, he had to conquer another feeling.
“You’re in constant fear,” he said. “You don’t know what situation you’re in.”
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Johnson and Golden reported from Seattle. Taxin reported from Santa Ana, California. AP journalists Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska; Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut; Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; and Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed.
