News helicopter crashes in downtown Seattle, killing two

SEATTLE - A news helicopter crashed and burst into flames in downtown Seattle on Tuesday, killing two people on board and setting cars on fire in a popular tourist area near the Space Needle, police and fire officials said.

The chopper appears to have fallen to the street as it attempted to take off from a helipad at the top of a local television news station a short distance from the Space Needle, Seattle Fire Department spokesman Kyle Moore told reporters.

Two people were found dead in the wreckage of the helicopter when emergency responders arrived at the scene, while the occupants of three vehicles that caught fire in the street following the crash managed to get out of their vehicles, Moore said. One was in critical condition.

Local television station KOMO, an ABC affiliate, said the aircraft was one of its news helicopters.

"KOMO chopper crash appears to have taken lives of our colleagues on board," Keith Eldridge, a reporter and anchor with the station, said on his Twitter page.

The crash, which left burning helicopter fuel streaming down the road, occurred on a street close to the city's famed Space Needle, in a popular tourist area that also hosts a children's museum and the Pacific Science Center.

Photos posted online by KOMO showed bright flames and towering smoke rising from cars at the scene.

After the fire was extinguished, the charred vehicles with their windows blown out remained in the street, which was covered in fire-retardant foam.

Emergency responders set up a tent over the burned frame of the helicopter with the two dead occupants inside. The tail of the chopper had been flung several yards away.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray was visiting with the family of one of the dead, a news photographer, said Rosalind Brazel, the mayor's press secretary.

The two individuals killed have not been publicly identified.

'HANGING ON TO LIFE'

Witness Carmen Romero said she was walking to a bus and looking at her cell phone when she gazed up and saw the falling helicopter. She watched it smash into a vehicle and burst into flames, then saw a man who was engulfed in flames emerge from a car, waving his arms as he ran.

"I've seen some things in my day but I've never seen anything like this before," she told Reuters. "I'm kind of in a daze."

The 37-year-old man who escaped his car was transported to a local hospital. He suffered burns over half his body and was in critical condition, Moore said.

"That person is hanging on to life," he said.

A woman who walked away from a second car that burned after the crash had made her way to a local police station and appeared to be in good shape, he said.

Witnesses told emergency responders that the driver of a pickup truck scorched at the scene had also walked away.

The Fire Department later reported on its Twitter page that this person was uninjured.

Brian Cruz told KOMO he saw the helicopter come down.

"It looked like it got hung up on some cables, and before you know it - boom! - it dropped, dropped to the street," he told the station.

The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration will investigate the crash, said Seattle police spokeswoman, Detective Renee Witt, who added that her agency would not probe the crash.

Murray told KOMO that the Seattle Monorail, which runs near the crash scene and connects a downtown shopping mall to the Seattle Center tourist complex, was shut down for the rest of the day.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Kaminsky in Olympia, Wash.; Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Bernadette Baum)