Small plane crashes into Calif. hospital; 2 dead

WATSONVILLE, Calif. A small plane crashed into a central California hospital's unoccupied office building and burst into flames just after takeoff Thursday evening, killing two people on board the plane, authorities said.

The single-engine plane had just taken off from nearby Watsonville Municipal Airport when it crashed at around 7:30 p.m., Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Lynn Lunsford said.

Witness Thomas Arnold was in the parking lot next to the Watsonville Community Hospital's administration building when he heard the plane overhead. He told the Santa Cruz Sentinel that the plane came careening sideways across the parking lot about 15 feet above his head.

"I saw two faces and two big sets of eyes," said the 34-year-old Arnold, whose fiancee was in labor inside the hospital.

Photos of the crash showed the charred tail end of the aircraft sticking out from the one-story building, part of which had been blackened by smoke. Damage appeared contained to an area at the end of the building.

Hospital spokeswoman Cindy Weigelt said the building housed mainly physicians' offices and was across a street from the hospital.

"None of our patients was affected," she told The Associated Press. "It did not hit the hospital."

She estimated that the medical office building was about 100 yards from the airport runway.

Witness George Benson told the Sentinel that he watched the plane take off and saw the pilot appear to attempt to clear a line of fog.

"He was heading toward the coast and tried to climb," Benson said. "From the time he took off he was going too steep, too slow."

No one on the ground was injured, and the names of the two people killed haven't been released. No evacuations were ordered from the hospital.

Watsonville is located near Monterey Bay, about 90 miles south of San Francisco.