Federal investigators have descended upon South Florida to try to determine what led to a deadly incident at Miami International Airport involving an Amazon cargo plane on Sunday afternoon.
Witnesses are now starting to share their experience of what they saw and heard when the plane overshot the runway, crashed and burst into flames.
Grace Mercado said she was in a vehicle being driven by her partner when he made a chilling statement.
“We hear a noise,” she said. “And he goes, ‘Oh my goodness. Is that a plane crash?'”
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Mercado said she looked up from her cellphone to see what he was talking about, and that’s when she saw the Amazon cargo plane had overshot the runway, plowed across the Miami-Dade street and came to a stop.
“It was extremely loud,” she said. “It wasn’t anything that I’ve ever heard before. It was like a shake. Honestly, I can’t compare it to anything else.”
Mercado said she was disoriented trying to make sense of what she had just seen.
“The plane was up in smoke,” she said. “It was just, it was like something from a movie. It was crazy.”
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And while first responders were nowhere to be seen at first, that changed quickly.
“There weren’t any ambulances or anything,” she said. “But they ended up there in under a minute. It was absolutely insane.”
Dozens of units, hundreds of personnel respond to crash at MIA
According to Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, more than 60 MDFR units and about 200 personnel responded to the scene of the crash, with the first units arriving within seconds.
In total, five people were killed and five others were injured.
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“Our hearts are with the victims and their families following (Sunday’s) tragic cargo plane crash,” Miami-Dade Fire Rescue said in a statement. “We are deeply saddened by the loss of life and are keeping everyone who was injured in our thoughts and prayers.”
Mercado said that after the crash, she didn’t see any movement in or near the crashed airplane, but instead just saw a lot of smoke.
“It’s something you don’t see in real life,” she said. “So, it’s surreal.”
Investigators with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will work to try to figure out why the aircraft left the runway and crashed.
The identities of the victims have not yet been released.
