A small single-engine plane carrying four people crashed into a restaurant and exploded into a massive fireball on Friday morning in the coastal city of Capão da Canoa, in Brazil's Rio Grande do Sul state, killing everyone on board.
All four people aboard were killed at the scene. According to Brazilian news outlet G1's Jornal Nacional, the online news portal of TV Globo, the victims were identified as business people Déborah Belanda Ortolani and Luis Antonio Ortolani, along with pilots Nelio Maria Batista Pessanha and Renan Eduardo Saes.
The plane—a Piper Malibu Mirage (Jetprop) single-engine turboprop—had originally departed from Itápolis in the state of São Paulo, stopped to refuel at Forquilhinha airport in Santa Catarina, and then continued on to Capão da Canoa to pick up the two business passengers. After boarding, the plane took off again, bound for inland São Paulo.
Shortly after leaving the runway, the plane struck a utility pole near the end of the strip, lost altitude, and plunged nose-first into the restaurant below. Security cameras in the area captured the moment the plane clipped the roof of the building, the Public Security Secretariat stated.
A witness described watching the crash unfold in real time. "It went up, but it didn't fully climb; it went up, lost power, the engine was making a noise. It almost hit the shop here, hit the pole, got caught on the pole, and went nose-first there, and then there was that explosion," truck driver Silvio Dias Luiz Júnior told Jornal Nacional.
Because the restaurant was closed at the time of the crash, no customers or staff were inside. Firefighters quickly moved to evacuate surrounding homes, and authorities confirmed no structural damage to neighboring buildings, allowing residents to return later in the day, officials stated.
"We had the explosion, and we immediately arrived at the site and were able to remove people from the nearby homes. We did not have any recorded injuries among people in those nearby residences," Lt. Sabrina Ribas, communications coordinator for the Rio Grande do Sul Civil Defense, told Jornal Nacional in a statement translated from Spanish.
Throughout the day, crews from the Military Fire Department, the Military Brigade, Civil Police, and the General Institute of Forensics worked the scene. By late afternoon, debris had been cleared, aircraft parts removed, and the bodies of all four victims had been transported for examination at the Legal Medical Department in Osório, the Secretariat said. The institute cautioned there is no estimated timeline for completing that work given the condition in which the remains were recovered.
"I have been following, since the very first moments, together with the security forces, the full mobilization in response to the incident involving the crash of a small aircraft in Capão da Canoa, unfortunately with confirmed fatalities," Leite said. "From this moment, I express my solidarity with the families of the victims and the community of Capão da Canoa in light of this sad event."
Brazil's Center for Investigation and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents, known as CENIPA, is now leading the investigation into what caused the crash.