Plane crash in the Everglades sends two to the hospital
Two people are hospitalized after the small plane they were riding crashed into the pitch-black, rain-swept Everglades late Thursday night.
Air traffic controllers reported that a plane went down west of Okeechobee Road and Krome Avenue near the Miami-Dade and Broward County line around 11:50 p.m.
Rescue crews from both counties responded to the call but a storm moving through the area initially made the search and rescue more difficult. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue responded with air, land and water crews, including the deployment of an airboat and a helicopter.
Using night vision goggles, the Miami-Dade rescue crew saw two people trapped within the mangled plane, which was in two pieces in a swampy area, dwarfed by sawgrass.
A flight medic was lowered to the wreckage site and saw movement from one of the individuals who was "heavily trapped" under the twisted metal, Miami-Dade Fire said. The medic also spotted a second person trapped under the wreckage and in knee-deep water.
A second medic, lowered to the crash site from the helicopter, assisted to help manually lift the plane to extricate the two survivors. Rescuers were joined by medics aboard a Miami-Dade Fire airboat and a Coast Guard helicopter.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the Cessna 152 aircraft was traveling to Miami Executive Airport before it crashed. The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.
The two as-yet unidentified people were airlifted to Kendall Regional Medical Center and are in stable condition.
The 1981 Cessna 152 single-engine, two-seat plane is registered to Rob Wes Inc. of Miami.
Footage from the wreckage shows that the plane is marked with the name Dean International Flight School in blue lettering.
"It’s just an absolute miracle that they're both alive," Dean Flight School owner Ian Robert Dean told Miami Herald news partner CBS4.
The Miami flight school has had more than two dozen prior incidents or accidents logged with the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board since 2007, records show.
These include a small Cessna 172 airplane that crash-landed in Key Biscayne last July, injuring a student pilot.
In the 29 listed incidents filed with the FAA, five fatalities were reported — including a pilot, flying solo on a Cessna 152 single-engine plane registered to Dean International who died in July in a crash deep into the Everglades about seven miles west of Homestead.
Follow @HowardCohen on Twitter.
This story was originally published May 4, 2018 at 7:35 AM with the headline "Plane crash in the Everglades sends two to the hospital."