In the city of Santa Cruz, the most populated in Bolivia, an incident occurred this Friday when a crop-dusting plane crashed onto a private home in the urban area. The event resulted in one person injured. The Cessna A188 aircraft crashed around noon in the neighborhood of Cañada El Carmen, near Plan 3,000, the General Directorate of Civil Aeronautics (DGAC) reported in a statement.
The plane had taken off from a private aerodrome headed for El Trompillo airport, the second most important in the city. Fortunately, the house was unoccupied at the time of the incident and there were no passersby in the area, so the only injured party was the pilot, who received treatment at a private clinic.
The Accident and Incident Investigation and Prevention Unit of the DGAC is working to determine the possible causes of the accident. Volunteer Firefighters UBR were the first responders on the scene, using foam to prevent ignitions from the fuel spill of the aircraft.
The captain of the Santa Cruz Departmental Fire Directorate, Carlos Canaviri, indicated that the aircraft belonged to a private company and had capacity for only one occupant. It is expected that once electrical power is cut off in the area by the Rural Electrification Cooperative, efforts can begin to remove the aircraft from the property.
In another similar incident last year in Sacaba, central Cochabamba region, a training plane of the Bolivian Air Force exploded and crashed onto a house, causing one fatality and one injury. Coordination between local authorities and the DGAC will be crucial to remove the aircraft from the house in Santa Cruz.
