News Navy F18 fighter jet crashes next to elementary school in Virginia

[JEL]

Navy F-18 crashes in Va. Beach
I-264 shut down in both directions at Laskin

Updated: Friday, 06 Apr 2012, 1:24 PM EDT
Published : Friday, 06 Apr 2012, 12:28 PM EDT
Rachel West

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) - The Navy confirms to WAVY.com that an F-18 jet has crashed in Virginia Beach Friday afternoon.

Grazia Moyers, spokeswoman for the Virginia Beach Police Department, told WAVY.com just before 12:30 p.m. what police believe is a military aircraft has gone down.

Cmdr. Phil Rosi with Naval Air Forces Atlantic told WAVY.com the plane was an F-18 with Strike Fighter Squadron 106. Rosi added two aircrew safely ejected from the plane that was based at Naval Air Station Oceana.

Sentara Healthcare says one pilot is at Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital.

Further information is not available at this time.

Police are responding to the scene at this time and will assist the military and the State Police, Moyer added.

Virginia State Police have shut down Interstate 264 at Laskin Road in both directions, Sgt. Anaya with the VSP said.

Virginia Department of Transportation traffic cameras showed thick, black smoke rising from the Birdneck Road area Friday afternoon around 12:30 p.m.

WAVY.com has a crew on the scene and will have more as soon as it comes in.

http://www.wavy.com/dpp/news/local_news/va_beach/military-plane-crashes-in-virginia-beach

 

[Kyle]

The elementary school in question was the same elementary school I attended in 2000 for my Kindergarten and 1st grade years. Never thought it would be in national headlines one day.

 

[N_Molson]

Pretty impressive :

The tail is characteristic, a F18, no doubt.

 

[Urwumpe]

Looks pretty devastated, not just the plane, but also the buildings around the place. But since it was an accident during take-off, sure not a big surprise then, even the F-18D had already enough fuel on board to ruin your day.

 

[Linguofreak]

The first I saw of this was a Facebook post from a friend who lives about 500 yards from the crash site.

 

[dumbo2007]

whats the condition of the pilot ?

 

[N_Molson]

Only 9 people were lightly wounded. There were 2 pilots, that successfully ejected. They were shocked (1 has probably a broken nose) but said to the first people they met "I'm sorry we landed in your garden".

 

[Urwumpe]

Looks like things had gone better than possible, eyewitnesses reported that the plane lost fuel before the crash and did not crash with nearly full tanks.

here is a bigger picture of the whole crash site:

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,826232,00.html

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Correct. The crew (one student pilot in front, one instructor in back) dumped several thousand pounds of fuel before punching out, which is normal when you have a low-altitude power loss. That's what seems to have happened here, so there's now several thousand pounds of JP-8 scattered along the flight track of the F/A-18D. The houses under the flight track will never have to worry about pulling weeds for the next few weeks, since the fuel will kill the weeds (and grass, and gardens, and...)