Small plane crashes into Clearwater mobile home park, ‘several fatalities’ reported

EDITOR’S NOTE: For live updates on the crash throughout the day on Friday, click here.

A small plane crashed into a mobile home park in Clearwater on Thursday evening, setting multiple homes on fire and resulting in several fatalities, authorities said.

At 7:08 p.m., a structure fire was reported at Bayside Waters mobile home park, Clearwater Fire Chief Scott Ehlers said during a news conference.

“Simultaneously, there was a report of an aircraft having an emergency at the airport,” Ehlers said. The tower picked up mayday radio transmissions from the pilot of a small aircraft that went off the radar about 3 miles north of the runway, Ehlers said.

When firefighters arrived at 7:15, they found four “heavily involved” mobile homes. Aircraft response vehicles arrived at the same time, which Ehlers said was a “critical component” in helping put out the flames.

The aircraft was found predominantly in one home, and Ehlers confirmed “several fatalities” inside the aircraft and the mobile home. Authorities were working with the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board to identify the aircraft, its pilot and any passengers, Ehlers said.

Citing the FAA, WTVT-Ch. 13 reported that the aircraft was a Beechcraft Bonanza V35, and the pilot had reported an engine failure.

Bayside Waters, formerly known as Japanese Gardens Mobile Home Park, is located at 19709 U.S. Highway 19 North, south of the Clearwater Mall.

The main home struck by the plane was a double-wide at 2647 Pagoda Drive, said Mary Fagan, 63.

It used to be her mother’s, Fagan said, and now belongs to a sister who was looking to fly down from Illinois after the crash.

Fagan said some neighbors called her Thursday evening and said: “Your mom’s mobile is on fire.”

She rushed over from her place up the road and stood on the pavement, watching as the temperature dropped and firefighters sprayed the smoldering rubble.

Fagan said she believes some people were staying in the home, but as of 10 p.m., she hadn’t been allowed closer than about 150 feet away and wasn’t sure whether anyone was inside at the time the plane went down.

Neighbors huddled beside her, watching smoke rise from the pile as water pooled in the street.

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One house down from the impact, Joe Miller was just starting to drift off when he heard an “unbelievable roar,” he said.

The next moment he found himself thrown onto the floor, covered in insulation and glass.

Wrapped in a blanket and still shaking with nerves hours after the explosion, Miller described his confused scramble through his torn-apart trailer, only to be greeted by leaping flame from what remained of the structure next door.

Miller, 72, has lived in the park for eight years, and he said he’s not sure what to expect when the sun rises, but worried that he wouldn’t be able to reach his medications.

“The roofs blown off and I don’t know what’s left inside. I just know I’m lucky to be here,” he said.

Steven Ascari lives in an apartment complex just south of Bayside Waters. He was inside his second-floor apartment when he heard what he described as a “super loud explosion” around 7:15 p.m.

“We thought maybe a car accident happened,” said Ascari, 25.

He went outside to investigate, and so did other neighbors.

“Next thing, a pillar of smoke, huge fire. Fires everywhere,” Ascari said. He took out his phone to capture the flames that seemed to be twice as high as his four-story apartment complex. “The fire was probably only getting bigger as we were getting outside.”

It took about 30 minutes for the fire department to contain the fire, he said, and smoke lingered until 9:15 p.m.

“I’ve never seen a fire like that. Ever. ... It’s hard to describe what it looked like seeing this mobile home community go up in flames,” Ascari said. “We’re just praying that everyone’s safe. That’s all we can think about.”

Flashing emergency lights strobed throughout Bayside Waters late Thursday as a helicopter thwacked above.

Nick Costa, 23, said he had just thrown dinner in the microwave and stepped outside to smoke a cigarette when he saw a small plane dropping from the sky.

The crash, he said, sounded like a bomb in a video game.

“I saw a big fire cloud just shoot up, as if (it was) oil derricks,” Costa said. Soon, residents were rushing closer in golf carts. “It was just pandemonium.”

In the clubhouse near U.S. 19, some residents were playing Thursday night bingo when one of them got a phone call, said Kathleen Schrader, 73.

“She stood up and said, ‘There’s a fire in the park,’” Schrader recalled.

Everyone stepped outside and spotted fire surging upward in another part of the park. “We didn’t see the plane,” Schrader said. “All we saw were flames.”

Right Angle News Network, an account on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, posted a video and information about the fire, citing a named eyewitness.

The Tampa Bay Times reached out to that woman, who asked to only be identified by her initials, L.C. She said she saw a white ball coming down fast at a 45-degree angle while she was getting gas for her car at Costco, north of the Bayside Waters mobile home park.

“I thought it was a falling star. It never dimmed out,” she said.

The woman said she pulled into an apartment complex north of the mobile home park, where people were lined up to see what happened. Flames soared above the park’s wooden fence, at least 10 feet tall, she estimated. She said the onlookers told her it was a plane crash, which she wasn’t expecting.

“Everybody was kind of pretty much saying it was a plane. It didn’t look like no plane from where I was at. It look like at UFO. I didn’t hear nothing, see no smoke, nothing twirling.

Mayor Brian Aungst Sr. was on his way home from a City Council meeting when the city manager and police chief called to update him on the crash.

“It’s tragic anytime something like this happens,” he said. “It’s just a shame and you hate to get these kinds of phone calls.”

Tampa Bay Times reporters Colleen Wright and Tracey McManus contributed to this report.