A large UPS cargo plane with three people aboard crashed and exploded Tuesday while taking off from an airport in Louisville, Kentucky, leaving at least three people dead and 11 injured.
Those numbers are expected to grow, the governor said. The plane went down about 5:15 p.m. as it was departing for Honolulu from Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
Video showed flames on the plane’s left wing and a trail of smoke. The aircraft lifted slightly off the ground before crashing and erupting in a huge fireball. Footage also showed parts of a building’s roof shredded near the end of the runway.
“We know that there are injuries. We don’t know yet about fatalities, but we’re asking all Kentuckians to pray for those that have been impacted,” Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear told The Associated Press.
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The crash prompted a massive emergency response involving police and fire agencies. Because of the intensity of the flames, some responders “have had to shelter behind different things,” Beshear said.
“It is still a very dangerous situation with different flammables or potentially explosive materials,” he added.
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg told WLKY-TV that fuel on the plane was an “extreme reason for concern in so many different ways.”
UPS’s largest package-handling facility is located in Louisville. The hub employs thousands of workers, handles about 300 daily flights and sorts more than 400,000 packages an hour.
A shelter-in-place order was extended to all areas north of the airport to the Ohio River. The airport is only a 10-minute drive from downtown Louisville, which sits on the river bordering the Indiana state line. The area includes residential neighbourhoods, a water park and several museums.
The McDonnell Douglas MD-11 aircraft owned by UPS was manufactured in 1991.
(FRANCE 24 with AP)
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