POMPANO BEACH, Fla. – Cellphone video captured the fiery scene after a small plane crashed into a house Monday afternoon in Pompano Beach, injuring a flight instructor and two students on board.
The crash was reported shortly after 3 p.m. in the 900 block of Harbor Drive, just east of Pompano Beach Airpark.
Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said the Beechcraft 76 crashed into the neighborhood shortly after takeoff.
Tuesday morning, the National Transportation Safety Board confirmed that two students and a flight instructor were on board.
Amid the sirens and smoke, neighbors could be heard looking for one another in cellphone video recorded moments after the crash.
"Be careful. Be careful," one resident can be heard yelling.
Armed with nothing but a garden hose, the group tried to keep the fire from spreading.
"Me and my next door neighbor ran over, kicked the fence in and then we saw the pilot and co-pilot standing there, so we grabbed them and dragged them to the street," Larry Ferris said. "They were badly burned."
Pompano Beach Fire Chief John Jurgle said firefighters arrived to find a house engulfed in flames.
Sky 10 was flying above the scene as firefighters were using water hoses to spray a house with a gaping hole in its roof.
The charred remains of the small plane could be seen in the backyard of a nearby home.
Jurgle said the homeowner was inside the house at the time of the crash, but he was not injured.
"I heard a loud boom that rattled the windows of the house," neighbor Dorine Wollangk said.
When the plane struck the house, it bounced over the house next door and came to a rest in the yard of the house next to that, Jurgle said.
Jurgle said the pilot and two passengers -- two men and a woman -- suffered "severe burn injuries." Two of the victims were taken to Broward Health Medical Center, and a third victim was taken to Broward Health North.
"I think there's some very lucky people in Pompano," Jurgle said.
It was not immediately known what led to the crash, but Bergen said the pilot was practicing takeoffs and landings at the time of the crash.
A witness told Local 10 News said the plane and was headed east toward the Atlantic Ocean when it went nose down and crashed into a neighborhood.
The plane is registered to Florida Aviation Academy.
According to FAA records, the plane was registered to a corporation in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Records show that the plane's registration expired at the end of February.
The victims' identities haven't been released.
"I thought I was going to see dead people in the backyard," Ferris said.