1 dead, 1 critically injured in floatplane crash in Lake Sammamish

BELLEVUE – One person died and another was critically injured in a floatplane crash Friday morning in Lake Sammamish, according to the Bellevue Fire Department.

The person who died was an adult male who lived near Lake Sammamish, BFD spokesperson Heather Wong said. It’s unclear if he was the pilot or passenger. The plane was a Seawind 3000, according to preliminary information from the National Transportation Safety Board.

The two were the only occupants of the plane, which crashed shortly after 11 a.m. Friday, the fire department said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Residents nearby called 911 and reported the plane was trying to take off when it crashed, Wong said.

“They saw the plane trying to go up two to three different times – up, came down, up, came down,” Wong said. “It sounded kind of sputtering, like the engine was stalling. And at the last point, when it was about 50 feet in the air, it took a nose dive into the water.”

Crews arrived on scene and there were already people helping the victims via a boat, Wong said.

“This is not a typical call for us,” Wong said. “We had a plane crash in 2009, maybe one or two since then, but it’s very rare that we respond to this type of incident.”

The residents who witnessed the crash provided CPR until first responders arrived and potentially saved someone’s life, Wong said.

“We won’t know what their outcome is, but the resident’s willingness to jump right in in a very scary situation and help somebody that they may have not known out of the goodness of their heart, that’s heroic,” Wong said.

The NTSB is investigating the crash and an investigator is en route to the scene, NTSB spokesperson Sarah Taylor Sulick said Friday afternoon.

A Bellevue resident who lives on the western shoreline near the crash site called the crash “devastating.”

“I always worry about something like this happening,” Janelle Shuey said, adding that planes land and take off on the lake on a daily basis.

Shuey, who lives two houses over from the residents who rescued the two people in the plane, said her neighbors started CPR while on the boat. They then brought the two from the plane to their dock to continue CPR.

Shuey’s neighbors “all jumped into action,” she said. “It makes me feel lucky that we live here.”

The Lake Sammamish crash is the second fatal plane crash in Washington in 2023, according to NTSB data; a Tacoma pilot died in a crash near Queets in April. The NTSB has this year investigated 26 Washington plane incidents, which injured 14 people in total.

Seawinds are small amphibian planes with four or five seats and are built from kits. Less than 100 planes exist in the U.S., according to FAA registration data.