‘Everything on fire all at once’
On the night of the crash, before McCarty and her husband, Ben, went to sleep, they tucked in their two young sons, put their dogs in crates, locked their doors and set the alarm.
“Everything was set up for their safety,” said Ben McCarty, 33, who has served in the Navy for 13 years.
Stillness fell over Murphy Canyon, home to more than 4,900 Navy families in one of the largest military housing complexes in the world.
Then, just before 4 a.m., a Cessna 550 Citation jet slammed into the front yard of the McCartys’ home, partially collapsing their roof and thrusting one of their trucks into the living room.
Waves of heat from the fire instantly penetrated their bedroom, jolting them awake.
“The impact rushed over me,” Ben McCarty said. “I felt like this strong wind or force, the heat.”
Srujana McCarty, 32, let out a nightmarish shriek. But outside, the deafening booms from exploding cars and the panicked voices of other neighbors screaming to find their children drowned her out.
The couple grabbed their sons, ages 2 and 4, and their dogs. The path to the front door was blocked by fire. The wall where their wedding photos hung was crumbling and burning, so the family fled out the back.
Next door, Maupin was in a deep sleep when her 14-year-old daughter barged into her bedroom, screaming about a fire outside of her open window.
In disbelief, Maupin looked outside and found a hellscape.
“The whole street was just in flames,” she said.
Jet fuel snaked down the street, setting every vehicle in its path ablaze, law enforcement officials said.
“Everything on fire all at once,” San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl told reporters. “It was pretty horrific to see.”
Maupin said people were knocking on doors, telling people their homes were on fire.
“People were pushing us and telling us we had to go this way,” she said.
Maupin and her daughter helped their neighbors evacuate, each taking a baby to safeguard. Maupin remembers seeing a young woman, standing alone in the middle of the street, paralyzed in fear.
“People were screaming, ‘Where are my kids?’” she said. “Things are exploding everywhere.”
Nearby, Rivera heard banging on her front door. She had seen the light from the explosion but thought it must have been lightning.
“I never in a million years thought a plane hit the ground,” she said.
Half asleep, Rivera, 28, herded her 2-year-old asthmatic daughter, grandmother, two dogs and two guinea pigs into a car.
As she drove away, she thought of all the children in the neighborhood. Her heart sank, thinking there was no way everyone in the neighborhood would survive. But miraculously no one on the ground was killed.
“Seeing it happen firsthand right in front of you,” she said, “it changes everything.”
The post A jet crashed into their neighborhood. Now they live in dread below an active flight path. appeared first on NBC News.
