13 dead as light plane crashes in Paranaque slum

Firemen remove roof sheeting next to victims bodies at the site of a plane crash at a slum in Parañaque City on Saturday. AFP

(Editor’s note: Previous posts failed to reflect several updates made in the story, a glitch noticed by readers. Our apologies.)

MANILA, Philippines —At least 13 people died and several others injured when a light cargo plane crashed into a shantytown in Parañaque City on Saturday, officials said.

Queen Air plane ploughed through a warren of shanties about four minutes after its pilot requested an emergency landing shortly after takeoff at 2:14 p.m., said Parañaque Mayor Florencio Bernabe.

Thirteen people, including three children and the plane’s pilot and co-pilot, were killed as the plane exploded in flames and set a row of shanties  on fire, he said.

“The plane struck one house but the others also went up in flames. These are informal settlers, packed into rows of houses,” Chief Inspector Enrique Sy  of the Parañaque City police told reporters.

Bernabe, in an interview with Radyo Inquirer 990AM,  identified the Occidental Mindoro-bound plane’s crewmen as Captains Timothy Albo and Jessie Kim Lustica

Charred bodies lay amid the twisted wreckage of burned slum homes as firefighters cleared away blackened sheets of corrugated iron.

At least 50 shanties, home to an estimated 600 people in Barangay Don Bosco in Parañaque, were razed, Bernabe said.

“The plane struck one house but the others also went up in flames. These are informal settlers, packed into rows of houses,” Sy told reporters.

Sy  said the five bodies that were first pulled out from the ashes were charred beyond recognition.

Rescuers also recovered the bodies of a child and an infant, said Gwendolyn Pang, secretary-general of the Philippine National Red Cross.

The blaze engulfed the nearby F. Serrano Elementary  School, but Pang said it was empty at the time because it was a weekend.

Some 20 people were rushed to the Parañaque Doctor’s Hospital, the Paranaque Medical Center, and the South Super Highway Hospital for treatment of burns.

Rogen Rodriguez, a police officer detailed at Manila airport, rushed home to help rescue neighbors from the fire, unaware that his sister, Maricel Garado, was among the dead.

“She had just stepped out of her house to look for her child outside. Part of the wreckage from the exploding plane struck her (the mother) and she was killed,” Rodriguez told Agence France-Presse.

“People first noticed the plane circling overhead. Then there was an explosion, it veered to one side and crashed,” Rodriguez’s bus driver brother-in-law Manuel Boton said.

Boton is married to a sister of the dead woman.

“Some people were able to run away but the others were unlucky and could not get out,” Boton said.

Resident Maribel Savedoria tearfully recounted on local radio how her husband perished in the blaze after pushing her and their four children out through the window of their rented room.

“He pushed all of us out to save us, but he did not make it. There was an explosion and all my children sustained burns,” she said.

Houses as far as 50 meters away from the crash site caught fire and quickly spread, the flames licking at the nearby school.

The fire sparked by the crash was declared out at around 4 p.m. after reaching the Task Force Alpha alarm, entailing response from all firefighting units in Parañaque and neighboring cities.

Sy described the aircraft as a twin-engine, six-seat cargo plane with tail number RPC 824, owned by the ITI Company. It was bound for  San Jose, Occidental Mindoro, to pick up a cargo of seafood.

Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines chief Ramon Gutierrez said the twin-engine, six-seat cargo plane RPC 824, owned by the ITI Company , declared an emergency four minutes after taking off from the Manila domestic airport.

“Unfortunately, the plane did not make it,” he said, adding that the cause of the crash was not immediately known.

The plane crashed before being able to return to the airport, he said, adding the plane would have been carrying a full tank of fuel when it crashed.

With reports from Jeannette I. Andrade and Tina Santos, Inquirer; Erwin Aquilon, Radyo Inquirer 990AM; Associated Press; Agence France-Presse

First posted 2:58 p.m.