One person died in a plane crash Thursday at Woodland State Airport. (Lauren Dake/The Columbian)Photo Gallery
One person was killed and two others were injured after a small aircraft ran off the runway at the Woodland State Airport on Thursday afternoon, Woodland Mayor Will Finn confirmed.
Emergency personnel were called to the scene at about 3 p.m., with firefighters arriving to find that a single-engine plane had gone off the end of the runway, through a fence and up an embankment, Clark County Fire & Rescue Spokesman Tim Dawdy said.
Injured people inside the plane were taken to area medical centers, he said. Three people were in the plane, Dawdy said, but he couldn’t comment on their conditions. Their names were not released as of Thursday evening.
No fire was reported, but the aircraft’s landing gear reportedly fell off during the crash.
Authorities on scene said that the plane, a Mooney M20K registered to a corporation in Woodinville, was bound for Renton.
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Allen Kenitzer said that the plane crashed under unknown circumstances. Both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.
Finn said that services from the wastewater treatment plant, located just north of the airport, will not be disrupted to residents of Woodland.
The plane remained in the landing strip area and did not affect nearby Interstate 5, though motorists slowing to look did cause a traffic hazard in the area, the Washington State Patrol reported.
Woodland State Airport, owned by the Washington State Department of Transportation, is east of I-5 next to the North Fork of the Lewis River. It has one paved runway, 1,953 feet long and 25 feet wide, with no hangars or other structures in the vicinity. It averages 69 takeoffs or landings per week, according to airnav.com, a website for private pilots.
A handful of incidents have been reported at the Woodland airport over the past 20 years, according to Columbian files. In June 1996, a Kalama man piloting an ultralight aircraft was killed during a failed takeoff. In June 2003, a plane taking off in gusty winds veered off course and slammed into the runway, but no one was killed. In September 2007, a plane that had taken off from Pearson Field in Vancouver attempted to make an emergency landing at Woodland after the engine quit, but landed short in a raspberry field. No one was injured in that incident.
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