WATCH: Plane crashes into power lines in Maryland, trapping two and cutting power to thousands
Jenny Goldsberry Maria Leaf
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A small plane crashed into Maryland power lines Sunday evening, trapping two people aboard roughly 100ft in the air.
It happened near the Montgomery Co. Airpark in a suburb of Washington, D.C. around 5:30 p.m. according to local fire officials.
This plane was identified by the Federal Aviation Administration as a single-engine Mooney M20J that had traveled from New York. It did not reveal the identities of the pilot and passenger who were trapped in the plane.
Those on board are alive and fire officials say they have not suffered serious injuries, but stresses that the situation is severe as any sudden movement of the aircraft could change that.
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The plane was in the process of landing at the airpark when the crash happened, according to Pete Piringer, a spokesman for Montgomery Co. Fire, who also posted video of the scene.
“We have confirmed that a private plane came into contact with Pepco’s transmission lines in Montgomery County, resulting in an outage to approximately 85,000 customers,” electricity company Pepco tweeted. “We are assessing damage and working closely with Montgomery County fire and emergency services. We are awaiting clearance to the scene before crews can begin work to stabilize the electric infrastructure and begin restoring service.
The company encouraged those affected by outages to report them.
The rescue of those on board is expected to take hours to complete.
“There is no other way to determine if it’s safe to access the tower until it is grounded or bonded. Which means crews have to go up to the wires themselves to put clamps or cables up to the wires to make sure there’s no static electricity,” Montgomery County Fire Chief Scott Goldstein said at a news conference Sunday night.
Crews are also having to deal with rain and fog in the area, which is making the rescue more challenging, he said.
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“The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate. The NTSB will be in charge of the investigation and will provide additional updates,” a statement from the FAA read.