Cargo-type plane crashes at Denali National Park in Alaska, fatalities onboard

Plane crashes in Denali National Park in Alaska

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A large airplane crashed in Alaska on Sunday and burst into a deadly fireball that sparked a forest fire at Denali National Park, officials said.

Park spokeswoman Kris Fister said there are fatalities, but it’s unclear how many because “the plane pretty much disintegrated.” The “large multi-engine cargo-type aircraft” went down on the south-facing slope of Mount Healy about 200 yards north of the only major road in the park and within a mile of the park headquarters, Fister said.

The fire was challenging responders, who did not immediately know who owns the plane. It went down about 3 p.m. near the eastern edge of the park, about 180 miles north of Anchorage.

Fister said the first responders arrived within minutes, but the plane was already engulfed in flames. The fire was contained by late Sunday evening, Fister said.

Doug Stockdale with the Alaska Fire Service said the fire was initially estimated at two square acres. Smokejumper crews were flown to the scene to fight it, he said.

No missing planes were immediately reported and military officials have said none of their planes were involved.

Clint Johnson with the National Transportation Safety Board said there are a number of large transport planes operating in Alaska. The NTSB was expected to arrive on scene Monday morning.

George Clare, of Las Vegas, said he saw the plane flying very low and slowly while he was walking toward the visitor’s center near the park entrance. He thought the plane was going to land on a local airstrip, so he proceeded to the visitor’s center. Within minutes, people came running in and saying a plane had crashed.

He said the crash caused a column of smoke a few miles west of the visitor’s center.

Clare said the aircraft looked like a military plane to him.

“It was a military khaki green kind of color,” he said. “It was propellor-driven. It was a fixed wing aircraft and it had kind of a flat underbelly.”

The crash happened just four days after a military cargo plane crashed at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, killing four people onboard.

The victims were Maj. Michael Freyholtz, 34, of Hines, Minn.; Maj. Aaron Malone, 36, of Anchorage; Capt. Jeffrey Hill, 31, of York, Pa., and Master Sgt. Thomas Cicardo, 47, of Anchorage. Cicardo was posthumously promoted to senior master sergeant Friday.

The four airmen were on a training mission Wednesday evening for a weekend air show at the Air Force base, which wrapped up Sunday. The C-17 crashed about a minute after taking off.