Plane crash in San Diego military neighborhood kills several, ignites homes and vehicles
Cessna 550 slams into Murphy Canyon area before dawn, leaving debris field, house fires, and over 90 residents displaced
A home is partially destroyed where a small plane crashed into a San Diego, California, residential street on 22 May 2025 The Federal Aviation Authority said a Cessna 550 crashed at around 3:45 am local time. The neighborhood is close to the Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport. The crash left a "gigantic debris field" and damaged some 15 homes and parked cars, ABC News quoted the San Diego assistant fire chief as saying.
Sandy Huffaker / AFP
Several killed as small plane crashes into San Diego neighborhood
San Diego, California — A pre-dawn plane crash in a densely populated San Diego military neighborhood killed several people Thursday and set off a string of fires that damaged homes and torched vehicles on both sides of the street, authorities said.
The Cessna 550 crashed around 3:45 a.m. local time into Murphy Canyon, a neighborhood near Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport, leaving behind what officials described as a "gigantic debris field." More than 15 homes and several cars were either struck by the aircraft or ignited by leaking jet fuel, according to the San Diego Fire Department.
"There are more than one fatality that we found so far," said Assistant Fire Chief Dan Eddy. "Every single car that was on both sides of the street went up. We have jet fuel all over the place."
'Everything on fire all at once'
The plane, which had departed from Kansas, was carrying between six to eight people, though the exact number aboard has not yet been confirmed. The crash site lies in a largely military housing area associated with Naval Base San Diego, one of the largest of its kind in the world. Nearly 100 residents have been displaced.
San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl described the early morning chaos as overwhelming:
"With the jet fuel going down the street and everything on fire all at once, it was pretty horrific to see. The firefighters and officers who ran in to evacuate people were heroic."
Despite the destruction, officials said no one on the ground was seriously injured — a fact they called "miraculous."
Eyewitnesses report chain-reaction explosions
Residents recounted being jolted awake by loud booms and immediate fires. “I looked out the window and there were just flames everywhere,” one man told Fox News. “Then we heard the chain reaction of boom, boom, boom.”
Video footage showed scorched trees, collapsed rooftops, and cars still smoldering hours after the incident. Eddy noted, "We had one stubborn car fire that wouldn’t go out, but the house fires have been knocked down."
Thick fog at the time of the crash may have played a role, but investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are still working to determine the cause.
(Sources: Agence France-Presse, Fox News, ABC News)