Crews don’t know how to remove crashed plane near Paine Field
Jun 10, 2015, 9:45 AM | Updated: 1:33 pm
When emergency crews rushed to the scene of a plane crash near Everett’s Paine Field Wednesday morning, they faced a foe as difficult as time: nature.
“It’s a heavily wooded area which made it difficult to reach,” said Paine Field Fire Chief Jeff Bohnet. “It is very thick, thick brush, so it’s not timber. My initial crew that went in there went through with machetes. It was a good challenge getting to the plane, initially.”
Emergency crews could only access the scene by foot all morning. The National Transportation Safety Board is currently investigating the site to determine the cause of the crash.
Bohnet said that crews have not yet decide to remove the plane from the thick brush.
The small aircraft that crashed was a Beech Bonanza model — a single-engine propeller plane that seats six. The airplane was witnessed taking off from the airfield, but it didn’t fly too far from the runway before plummeting into the brush below, just south of the airfield.
“This happened on takeoff,” Bohnet said. “The people that called 9-1-1 heard the plane [take off] and saw it go down.”
Only two people were on the plane when it crashed. One person died. The pilot survived.
The initial report came in at 9:30 a.m. of a small plane that crashed in the 11800 block of Mukilteo Speedway. Firefighters found the plane and extracted two people, according to the Everett Herald. The pilot was conscious, at the time. CPR was being administered to the passenger, initially.
