Plane crashes into several Oregon homes, killing 3 including homeowner

PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV/Gray News) - A plane crashed into a home in Oregon, leaving three people dead and thousands of people in the area without power.

According to the investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board, a Cessna 421C took off at 10:25 a.m. on Saturday for a maintenance test flight from Troutdale Airport.

Soon after, the pilot reported “controllability issues.”

Seconds later, a nearby helicopter pilot reported that the plane had crashed.

The plane hit power lines on its way down, causing about 22,000 PGE customers to lose power for several hours on Saturday.

The plane also crashed into multiple homes.

In a news conference Tuesday morning, Air Safety Investigator Michael Hicks along with local authorities, gave an update on Saturday’s plane crash.

Hicks said finding out what those issues were could take up to 18 months.

Officials also confirmed the pilot, a passenger on the plane, and a woman in a townhome that was struck died in the crash. Their names have not yet been released.

Hicks said the medical examiner’s office is still working to officially confirm their identities.

“It was catastrophic. That’s the only word I can use,” said Tom Keegan, who was home Saturday morning. He said it was a beautiful day until the unthinkable happened.

“There was just this terrible, terrible sound, I can’t even describe it,” Keegan recalled. “I saw a bunch of insulation and smoke; I stood up to see what that was and that’s when the explosion occurred. It threw me into the wall and consequently into the bathtub. I turned around and the whole room was filled with smoke and insulation, it was like a snowstorm.”

All Keegan knew was to escape the flames. Barefoot, he made his way to the street and reunited with his wife Judy, who had been setting up at the neighborhood pool when she saw the plane go down. He was soon taken to the hospital for monitoring.

Meanwhile, a few homes over, Kim Williams and her 7-year-old daughter were heading home from the coast when they got the call their townhome was burning. Kim’s sister was trying to get into the home to rescue her three cats.

“I’m just frozen, and I’m trying to remember this code that I rarely use,” Kim said.

She got to the townhomes a couple of hours after the fire had started.

“I just collapsed,” she said, emotional. “I got to the grass across the street from my house and I just fell on the ground, sobbing… You never, ever think this is going to happen to you. Later that day, I got a ‘start-your-life-over’ garbage bag from the Red Cross.”

Kim said it was a miracle her cats survived. One of them had been thrown from the explosion. Their other two cats were found the next day, hiding in the remnants of the home.

“The theory is that he was flown out of the third-level window and landed on the grass across the street,” she said. “His whiskers got a little charred….it’s crazy.”

Now, these families have to rebuild, heal, and grieve all at once.

Both the Keegan family and the Williams family have GoFundMe pages set up to help them recover.

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