5 killed when plane hits Oregon vacation home

GEARHART, Ore. – A single-engine plane crashed into a fogbound coastal home where a family was vacationing Monday, killing the two people in the plane and three children on the ground, authorities said.

A woman and two children were injured.

City officials in the resort town of Gearhart said pilot Jason Ketchson and passenger Frank Toohey, 58, both from Clatsop County, were aboard the plane that went down before 7 a.m., apparently hitting a tree during conditions described as foggy with low clouds.

When the plane crashed, six people were in the four-bedroom rental home at Gearhart for a family reunion and vacation, City Administrator Dennis McNally said. A vacant house next door was also damaged.

The children killed were identified as Julia Reimann, 10, of Beaverton; and Hesam Farrar Masoudi, 12, and Grace Masoudi, 8, both from Denver.

Ruth Jackson-Reimann, 47, and two children, Christopher Reimann, 13, and Sarah Reimann, 11, were flown to Portland for treatment at a burn center, said Michael Griffiths, executive director of the regional emergency transport consortium Life Flight. The hospital declined to release their conditions.

Jackson-Reimann rescued one of the children and the other surviving child climbed out a window, officials said. Two other adults were out for a walk when the crash occurred.

The owner of the house, Greg Marshall of Portland, told the Oregonian newspaper that the victims arrived Sunday for a planned two-week stay.

The plane, a four-seat Cessna, was owned by a business in nearby Seaside, Aviation Adventures, which had rented it to Ketchson, McNally said.

The plane had just taken off from Seaside Airport and was headed to the southern Oregon city of Klamath Falls. An explosion was reported about 20 seconds after the crash.

Tourist magazine editor Rebecca Herren lives about a block and a half from the crash site and said she was in bed between 6:30 a.m. and 7 a.m.

“I heard the plane above and thought, ‘Gosh, it’s awfully low and awfully early,’ ” she said.

The explosion shook her house and was followed by two smaller explosions, she said. The city said homes were rocked for up to a half-mile away.

Part of a golf course separates her house from the crash site, Herren said, and on a clear day she would be able to see it.

“Because it was so foggy, I couldn’t see any smoke plumes,” she said. “Then I heard the sirens start.”

The cause of the crash has not been determined. Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board investigators were on the scene.

“It’s just a devastating sight,” McNally said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”