Officials focused on examining Santa Monica Airport crash site

The National Transportation Safety Board’s first step in investigating the plane crash at Santa Monica Airport will be to examine the aircraft once it gains access, officials said Monday.

Investigators were waiting for a crane and other equipment to make the twin-engine Cessna Citation accessible to NTSB members, officials said. The plane is buried beneath the mangled and scorched remains of the hangar the aircraft smashed into about 6:20 p.m. Sunday.

Firefighters said Sunday that the crash was “unsurvivable� and have yet to determine how many people were on board. The Los Angeles County coroner has yet to recover any bodies.

PHOTOS: Santa Monica plane crash

Fire officials said the plane, flying in from Hailey, Idaho, veered off the right side of the runway and slammed into a storage hangar. Both the hangar and the jet burst into flames, officials said, and the hangar collapsed.

The jet holds up to eight people, according to Cessna and registration information.

Late Sunday night, authorities said the fires were extinguished after damaging three buildings. Neighborhood residents had been concerned that the fire could spread to nearby homes.

The hangar fire burned at a relatively high temperature because jet fuel was involved, fire officials said. The flames then spread to two hangars nearby and caused minor damage.

The intensity of the fire and the collapsed hangar made it hard to access the wreckage of the plane or read its tail number, making it difficult to identify those on board, sources told The Times.

The Santa Monica Fire Department dispatched six fire engines and four ambulances, but no victims were taken to hospitals, spokeswoman Bridgett Lewis said.

The Cessna business jet is registered to Creative Real Estate Exchange LLC, according to the firm’s website. The owner of the plane lives in Malibu but is not named in FAA records.

The plane had made eight flights since Sept. 15, according to flight tracking websites, including four between Hailey and Santa Monica.

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