The aircraft was carrying three employees of electric carmaker Tesla Motors Inc. when it took off from Palo Alto Airport in heavy fog Wednesday morning en route to Hawthorne Municipal Airport in Southern California. The identities of the employees have not been released.
Shortly after takeoff, the Cessna 310 clipped a set of power lines and crashed on Beech Street in East Palo Alto just before 8 a.m. Residents ran for safety as the plane and debris slammed into houses.
A wing slammed into a home where a day care center operated, but the seven people inside the house, including an infant, all escaped moments before the home went up in flames.
Menlo Park Fire Chief Harold Schapelhouman said "miraculously" no one was killed or injured on the ground, crediting either luck or the skill of the pilot.
Benjamin Ramirez said he was leaving his house to take his son to school when he saw the plane go down, making "a sound as loud as a bomb." After telling his son to go back inside the house, he said he ran over to the crash site and tried unsuccessfully to douse the fiery wreckage with a hose.
