A jet crash at Santa Monica Airport left no survivors and led officials to scale back on work in the immediate vicinity.
Twin-engine business jet Cessna Citation veered off the right side of the runway after touching down in Los Angeles, Calif. at 6:20 p.m. PST, Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson Ian Gregor told CNN. The aircraft slammed into a hangar, which collapsed onto the plane after impact. Captain John Nevandro of the Santa Monica Fire Department reported the hangar was so badly damaged that it was unsafe for firefighters to enter the rubble.
"It was an unsurvivable crash," Nevandro told CNN.
Officials are almost certain there were no survivors from the crash, but it is still unclear how many people were on board.
A few hours after the jet crash, chairman of the Santa Monica Airport Commission David Goddard told the Los Angeles Times that his team was trying to get the City Council to cut activity at the airport, since the site of the crash lay just 150 feet from some residences.
"We've been attempting to get the City Council to reduce operations at the airport," he stated. "The [assumed] fatalities were tragic, but I was certainly grateful that it happened on the tarmac...versus off the end of the runway."
If the plane hadn't hit the hanger, he reported, it might have run the risk of colliding into homes nearby.
Goddard, who lives in the Santa Monica neighborhood of Sunset Park, said that when he was on his way home at around 7 p.m., he saw the area around Airport Avenue looking as though "the fog had rolled in."
"As we drove down we could smell the burning fuel," he reported.
The National Transportation Safety Board has been employed to investigate the event. Officials landed in Santa Monica on Sunday, and have begun looking into the crash as of Monday morning.
According to aircraft manufacturer Cessna's website, the Citation jet can hold between seven and nine passengers.
