SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
An air ambulance crashed in Philadelphia last night shortly after takeoff. The four crew members and a patient and her mother all died. The plane exploded upon impact, causing at least one nearby house to catch fire. Kenny Cooper of member station WHYY joins us. Kenny, thank you for being with us.
KENNY COOPER, BYLINE: Thanks for having me.
SIMON: Take us through what happened. What do we know?
COOPER: Well, sometime after 6 p.m. on Friday, a Learjet 55 that was carrying six people crashed in northeast Philadelphia. You know, it unleashed this huge explosion and started a fire. And the jet rescue air ambulance was supposed to be traveling from Philadelphia to Missouri and then, eventually, in its final destination, Mexico. And as you mentioned earlier, there was a pediatric patient on board who was accompanied by her mother and four crew members, and all six were unfortunately killed in the crash.
Some videos online show, like, the jet falling from the sky and then, like, blowing up. And witnesses that I spoke to were at a loss for words. I spoke to a guy by the name of Vadim Osipov, who was originally from Ukraine but currently lives in the Philly area. He told me he was in shock. And we were standing outside in the rain and he's just huddling, watching the scene kind of unfold.
SIMON: And what was that scene like - the explosion on the ground as much as anything else?
COOPER: So this area is like a mixture of commercial spaces as well as homes, and there was obviously a very large and intense fire. There was smoke. A handful of people on the ground were injured. At least six people were admitted into Temple University Hospital - Jeanes Campus with injuries. And the explosion kind of set off this blaze that was, you know, caught onto a house, and there was debris and items from the crash spread out all around the scene, and people ran out into the streets. And as I mentioned before, it was also raining, so, you know, people are just soaked, huddling in the rain, trying to look and see what was going on.
SIMON: How has the city responded?
COOPER: You know, people couldn't believe what they were seeing. And, you know, as the city kind of rushed to the scene - I'm talking police, fire - they begin sectioning off the street so people couldn't get access to it, and they immediately went to go fight the blaze. You know, soon, you know, there were state officials on the scene. You know, Pennsylvania State Police, Department of Transportation, Emergency Management Authority, even Department of Environmental Protection, you know, they were all kind of mobilized to help manage the site.
Then Philadelphia mayor, Cherelle Parker, spoke to the media and alongside Governor Josh Shapiro and basically kind of, you know, reaffirmed this message of one Philly, which is something they've been saying recently about uniting the city under one message, right? And that's kind of been their response, is asking people to kind of rally around to each other and make sure they avoid the scene, but support one another.
SIMON: Kenny, any indications that you can report on so far as to why this flight may have crashed?
COOPER: No, we do not have any official confirmation of anything yet. Governor Josh Shapiro said that he was in contact by phone with the U.S. secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy, who dispatched four FAA personnel to the area. So we're going to wait for this National Transportation Safety Board to lead the investigation. But as of now, you know, a lot of it's just speculation.
SIMON: Kenny Cooper of member station WHYY in Philadelphia. Kenny, thank you so much for being on the story and being with us today.
COOPER: Thanks for having me.
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