'Hero' Savannah plane crash pilot 'tried to avoid pedestrians on ground'
A witness who says he saw a US military cargo plane crash in Savannah, Georgia, says that the pilot is “a hero” for trying to avoid hitting people on the ground.
Roger Best, a truck driver in the area near the crash, told CNN that he saw the plane going down, and that the military plane appeared to be trying to avoid hitting them.
“The guy is a hero, he barely made it over the tree line, looked as if he tried to turn and nose dive straight into the ground right in front of me,” Mr Best said.
Mr Best said that his company is in charge of transporting hazardous materials, and that it would have been a disaster if the plane had collided with his haul.
“It honestly look like he was trying to avoid hitting us cuz if he did this area is a giant bomb and this whole 5 Mi radius would have blown up,” Mr Best, who gave the comments over Facebook, continued.
At least five people were killed after the Air National Guard WC-130 plane crashed off a highway near the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport.
Photos and video from the scene showed a thick black smoke and flames at the crash site, and officials closed down surrounding roads immediately after the crash to keep the public away from the scene.
It was not immediately clear how many people were on the plane when it went down, or what sort of cargo, if any, it may have been carrying. The 165th Airlift Wing based in Savannah, which responded to the crash, said on Facebook that the plane had been “performing a training mission”.
One witness who works near the airport said that “the ground shook like a mob was going off” when the plane crashed. Others said that office building lights shook and flickered when the crash occurred.
Just the tail section of the plane remained in tact from the impact, Chris Hanks, the assistant public information officer with the Savannah Professional Firefighters Association, told the Associated Press. That section of the plane was pictured in flames on Highway 21. The ground in front of the tail was black and littered with debris, Mr Hanks said.
The WC-130 is used on “weather reconnaissance” missions and “is a high-wing, medium-range aircraft flown by the Air Force Reserve Command for weather reconnaissance missions. The aircraft penetrates tropical disturbances and storms, hurricanes and winter storms to obtain data on movement, size and intensity,” the US Air Force website says of the plane.a
Related Video: Several Casualties in Military Plane Crash in Georgia
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