Skip to content

Plane crashes at Gabriola Island; multiple fatalities

There have been multiple deaths after a small plane crashed on Gabriola Island on Tuesday evening. RCMP spokesman Cpl. Chris Manseau confirmed the crash and said it happened on the northwest corner of the island.
gabriola

There have been multiple deaths after a small plane crashed on Gabriola Island on Tuesday evening.

RCMP spokesman Cpl. Chris Manseau confirmed the crash and said it happened on the northwest corner of the island.

Manseau said police were not ready Tuesday night to specify the exact number of dead. The B.C. Coroners Service is in the opening stages of its investigation.

RCMP will continue to investigate along with members of the Transportation Safety Board who are expected to reach the scene today.

Gabriola resident Blair Mann lives near the crash site and said in an interview the plane went down in a small wooded park.

“Miraculously, it missed all the homes, the houses,” said a shaken and distraught Mann. “I don’t know how he did it but he missed all the houses.”

He said his first alert to the crash came as he was watching the evening news and explosions shook his entire house.

“There were multiple explosions,” Mann said.

B.C. Emergency Health Services said two ambulances stationed on the island were dispatched to the scene and five others joined them by ferry.

Bette Lou Hagen, who lives in the area of the crash, said she was reading a novel when she heard “like a loud sonic boom or something.”

“I heard a loud engine – it didn’t sound like a car engine – but it was really shaking my house and then I heard a loud crash and then I don’t how much later it was I heard an explosion,” she said. She went outside but could not see much because the area has a lot of trees, and then called the police.

The plane crashed about 50 metres from her backyard, she said. “It was pretty awful. I’m still shaking.”