Forty-nine people died when a Continental Express airplane crashed into a house in Clarence Center shortly after 10 p.m. Thursday, setting off a huge fire that could be seen miles away.
The dead included 44 passengers, four crew members and a person on the ground.
A nurse at Erie County Medical Center said the hospital's second shift had been told to stay late to treat survivors but was sent home before midnight.
"There were no souls to bring in and treat," she said.
Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority spokesman C. Douglas Hartmayer said there was little communication between the plane, Flight 3407, and the tower before the crash. Crew members aboard the flight from Newark Airport had reported mechanical problems as they approached Buffalo.
The plane reportedly was a Bombardier Q400, a twin-engine turboprop with a passenger capacity of about 74.
"I was told by the tower the plane simply dropped off the radar screen," Hartmayer said.
Initial reports said the crash site was 6050 Long St., not far from the Clarence Center Fire Hall on Clarence Center Road. Police said one man was in the residence at the time of the crash.
About 12 other nearby homes were evacuated. Several of them sustained fire damage.
"We had a significant amount of fuel left in the aircraft, said Dave Bissonette, emergency co ordinator for the Town of Clarence. "It was a hazmat situation."
Chris Kausner of Clarence, whose sister Ellyce was aboard the flight, told The Buffalo News that after he heard about the crash, he called another sister who had gone to pick her up at the airport to see if her plane had landed.
"She said that they told them the plane had landed and was taxiing, but that was not the case," he said.
Kausner said Ellyce was a law student at Florida Coastal University in Jacksonville and was coming home to visit.
In Washington, the National Transportation Safety Board announced that it will be sending a team to Buffalo this morning to investigate the crash.
Lorenda Ward will serve as chief investigator. She has investigated several other plane crashes during her tenure at the agency -- including the fall 2007 crash in Manhattan that claimed the life of New York Yankees pitcher Corey Lidle.
Safety Board Commissioner Steven Chealander and public affairs officer Keith Holloway will accompany Ward to Buffalo. While the agency's investigations usually take months to complete, the agency said it would hold a news conference to discuss the accident in the Buffalo area today.
The crash is America's deadliest since a Comair commuter jet crashed in Lexington, Ky., on Aug. 27, 2006. That crash also claimed 49 lives.
David Luce, who lives about 150 yards from the crash scene, on Goodrich Road, said he wasn't surprised to learn that there were so many deaths.
"I can't imagine that anyone survived it," he said. "If you heard that explosion, and you saw how fast the whole area was on fire, it was pretty clear that it was jet fuel burning."
Just before the crash, Luce heard the plane and noticed that it sounded a little funny.
"It sounded quite loud, and then the sound stopped," Luce said. "Then one or two seconds later, there was a thunderous explosion. I thought something hit our house. It shook our whole house."
"There was the initial boom, and then these cannon shots ... these loud secondary explosions, and they went on for about 10 minutes."
Within 5 to 10 seconds, Luce said he saw flames 40 or 50 feet high.
One or two minutes after the crash, Luce had walked to a spot that gave him a clearer view of the scene.
"The house was already flattened. There was no house, just a pile of rubble and still burning."
Luce said he heard screams following the crash, but he doesn't know whether they came from injured people or from neighbors.
Almost two hours after the crash, Luce said he still saw flames shooting from the crash site, but they were not as high as before.
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