SAN DIEGO — A private jet flying in dense fog crashed into a San Diego neighborhood early Thursday morning, sparking intense flames that scorched several homes, mangled dozens of vehicles and forced almost 100 people to evacuate.

The only known fatalities were the occupants of the aircraft. It still wasn’t clear exactly how many people were on board, but San Diego Fire-Rescue Department Assistant Chief Dan Eddy said there were at least two.

The FAA identified the plane as a Cessna 550. Eddy said the plane can hold eight to 10 passengers.

The plane crashed into a military housing community in the Murphy Canyon area just before 4 a.m. Thursday, Eddy said. Officials have confirmed that no residents were killed in the crash.

“Crews arrived on scene to find multiple homes and cars on fire,” Eddy said at a news conference. Firefighters have since been able to quell the flames, but at least 10 homes were severely damaged, he said, and a block of vehicles were left completely mangled — at least a dozen, according to footage from the scene.

While it initially appeared that no residents were injured, officials have since confirmed at least eight people were hurt, all with minor injuries, Eddy said. One was taken to the hospital, while the others were treated for minor injuries at a nearby evacuation center.

“This is a worst-case scenario: a plane into homes,” Eddy said.

“There’s plane everywhere,” he said, calling the scene a “gigantic debris field.”

The smell of jet fuel and burnt wood was still overwhelming in Murphy Canyon, even hours after the crash and blocks away. One single-family home had a massive, charred hole on one side, while nearby cars were almost completely flattened.

On the lawn of a scorched home with a caved-in roof, a plastic lawn chair and the green-and-black wheel from a child’s bike were splayed across grass. The house across the street was, incredibly, untouched.

“I can’t quite put words to describe what this scene looked like, jet fuel going down the street, everything on fire all at once,” said San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl. “It was pretty horrific.”

City Council member Raul Campillo, who represents the neighborhood, said he met some of the military families who evacuated in exceptionally challenging conditions, with help from each other and first responders.

“I heard stories ... about military families helping military families out of their homes, jumping out of windows, avoiding fire,” Campillo said. “We know there was many miracles and many heroic actions.”

Wahl said almost 100 people have been displaced from the crash and the area remains closed for continued investigations and cleanup.

The private plane took off from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey around 11:15 p.m. Wednesday and stopped for just under an hour in Wichita, Kansas, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware. It was headed for Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport, a general aviation airport owned by the city of San Diego and located less than three miles from the crash site.

Shortly after 3:40 a.m. the pilot announced on the radio that the plane was three miles away from landing on Runway 28, according to a recording from LiveATC.net. The pilot did not signal any problem with the aircraft and did not issue a distress call in the recordings reviewed by the Los Angeles Times.

The crash was reported at 3:47 a.m.

The National Transportation Safety Board was en route to investigate along with the FAA, Eddy said. He declined to comment on the focus of the investigation, but it appeared visibility or nearby power lines could have been factors.

Dense fog had rolled into the area around the time the plane was approaching the airport. Visibility was at half a mile at 3:55 a.m. and had dropped to a quarter of a mile just after 4 a.m. in the area around the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, which is just a few miles north of the crash site, according to the National Weather Service.

“We had a marine layer that was deep enough that the clouds got into some of the valleys this morning,” said Adam Roser, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in San Diego. “This one kind of crept in from the ocean into the valley and led to some of those foggy conditions.”

The airport’s control tower doesn’t open until 6 a.m., but planes are still able to land, according to the airport.

Eddy said that investigators were also looking into a debris field under some power lines not far from the neighborhood where the plane crashed.

“There’s a clipped power line behind us back there,” Eddy said. “We’re trying to figure out if that was involved from the plane.”

The Cessna 550 that crashed was owned by a company in Alaska, according to FAA records. It was built in 1985.

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.