A military plane crashed into a desert community in southern California on Wednesday, destroying one home and setting two others on fire.
The jet Harrier AV-8B crashed in the front yard of a home in the city of Imperial at around 4:20 p.m. PDT, the Associated Press reported. Wreckage from the plane damaged the roof of one home and the resulting explosion set two other houses on fire in the city located 90 miles east of San Diego. No one was injured.
The pilot, Lieutenant Jose Negrete, was able to eject himself and received medical treatment at a nearby hospital, officials told the AP. Negrete said no residents on the ground were harmed.
Christopher Garcia, 11, heard the crash from his home two blocks away. The explosion "felt like an earthquake," he told the AP.
Garcia went outside and saw "a mushroom cloud of black and red smoke" gathering above the house with the damaged roof. He also saw Negrete floating to the ground under a parachute about 200 feet from the crashed plane.
"[Negrete] didn't look like he was injured," Jose Santos, who was driving as he saw the plane crash into the front yard, told the AP. "He was rolling from side to side."
The house that suffered the most damage is now missing a roof but is still standing, the AP reported.
"It was really scary," Patricia Roblas, who lives a few houses down from the crash site, told NBC 7 San Diego. "After they put the fires out, a few minutes later, we saw another huge fire so we didn't know if there was an explosion because of gas or what."
It is not clear if anyone was inside the burning homes.
It is also not yet known what caused the plane to crash after it took off from Marine Corps Air Station Yuma in Arizona, a spokeswoman from Marine Corps Air Station Miramar told the AP.
The accident occurred less than a month after another Harrier jet from the Yuma base crashed near Phoenix. No one was injured in that crash.
