The crash took place this Monday morning at 8:29 a.m. in the town of La Bretonnière-la-Claye in Vendée. A passenger plane crashed into the wall of a house. The toll is heavy: two dead, a French couple who lived in Atlantic Air Park, a residential area near the Chasnais airfield.
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A dislocated carcass was what the emergency services discovered when they arrived at the scene of the tragedy. The crash occurred at 8:29 a.m. this Monday morning in the town of Bretonnière-la-Claye in Vendée. The pilot and his wife died in the crash.
According to the first testimonies collected by our team on site, the tourist plane took off from the Luçon-Chasnais aerodrome. The device apparently suffered a technical problem and fell on the wall of a house in a housing estate bordering the D60 which crosses the town.
Marcel, a local resident, saw “a huge cloud of black smoke.” “At first I thought it was a big chimney fire. And then I was told about a plane. As there is a school right next door, I said to myself as long as he didn’t fall on it! “
One of the neighbors told him “she was woken up by a loud noise.”
“She looked out her window, and she saw the plane crashed right in front, a little bit further away, she saw the explosion, she said it was like fireworks, ‘i there were flames”says Marcel.
It didn’t last very long, but the plane completely fell apart.
Marcel
Neighbor of the accident
Emergency services operated in two sectors, a fire zone to extinguish debris and a person rescue operation. The accident left two dead, a French couple, who according to our information had their habits at Atlantic Air Park, a residential area on the outskirts of the Chasnais airfield a short distance from the village.
David Marchegay, the mayor of the town, arrived on the scene ten minutes after the accident. “I didn’t see anything. When I arrived, the residents were already there. They had taken the precaution of keeping a sufficient perimeter so as not to expose themselves to the risk of explosion because the device was still on fire And so I arrived with them, the first firefighters arrived. five minutes, ten minutes later“, says the elected official.
He will say no more about the circumstances of the accident. “I don’t know anything, an investigation is underway”he recalls.
The bomb squad arrived on site. • © Olicier Cailler/France Télévisions
Thirty firefighters were dispatched to the scene. A civil security mine clearance team is also present. The aircraft’s pyrotechnic systems have been neutralized. The device was lifted at the end of the morning. The rest of the operations are taken care of by the national gendarmerie
The plane crashed into the wall of a house located in the town of La Bretonnière-la-Claye in Vendée. • © Damien Raveleau/France Télévisions
Two people were rehoused by the town hall. The intervention zone is prohibited until Tuesday evening, October 8.
A medical-psychological support unit has been set up to support residents. Luckily none of them were injured, at that time many local residents were at their workplace.
“An investigation into the causes of death was opened by the La Roche sur Yon public prosecutor’s office to determine the circumstances of this tragedy. The investigations are entrusted in co-referral to the Vendée gendarmerie group, to the gendarmerie brigade of air transport and the air transport division research section”, a specified Sarah Huet, the public prosecutor of La Roche-sur-Yon, Tuesday October 8.
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