Ellenville Mayor Jeff Kaplan said the single-engine plane touched down on Park Street around 9 a.m. and skidded down the length of this typically busy residential street where kids can often be seen out playing before crashing into the embankment at the end of street.
He said the plane also narrowly missed pulling wires down onto the street.
Kaplan said the pilot and a passenger, who were not immediately identified, were able to get themselves out of the plane and were taken to an area hospital by ambulance with injuries that did not appear to be serious.
“They did a massive landing job,” Kaplan said.
He said while he was not sure exactly where the plane took off or was heading to, but noted that Resnick Airport is just a short distance away in the town of Wawarsing. “I assume he was trying to land or had taken off from Resnick Airport.”
Kaplan said he did not know what issue caused the plane to have to make an emergency landing.
Videos shot by Angela D’Aiuto who lives at 3 Park St. and posted onto Facebook showed the plane with extensive damage to the fuselage, one of the wings bent and the propeller sheered off and pieces of the plane laying on Park Street and in the intersection with Center Ave.
D’Aiuto, who lives down the block from where the plane came to a rest at the corner, said she was gardening when she saw the plane “puttering really low.”
“It was a very quiet morning,” she said. But soon that quiet was shattered.
She said the plane came across a Stewart’s Shop on the corner of Main and Center Avenue and then it came above the houses on the odd side of the street before it passed right above her two-story house.
“I could hear the engine puttering,” D’Aiuto said. ” “I thought, ‘it’s going to fall down,’ so I got off the porch.”
She said after that, the plane crashed into the street sign at Circle Ave and Park Street and struck trees boarding a wooded area and she surmised the plane must have gotten spun around from the impact from where it came to rest.
She said it was fortunate that crash occurred in a fork in the road because it was a wider intersection and there were no houses on the side of the street where the plane came to a rest.
“Everybody was amazed it didn’t hit a house, a car or a person,” she said.
“We could hear the fuel leaking,” she said. “Emergency crews told us everyone has to step back.”
She said the incident came just a couple of days after a fire at a two-family home down the street.
“The neighbors were talking about how we had these two things in one week,” D’Aiuto said.
D’Aiuto, who’s lived in the neighborhood only one-and-a-half years, said she won’t soon forget the incident.
“It’s definitely memorable,” D’Aiuto said. “We’re all very lucky.”
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