Search continues for cockpit voice recorder in Northeast Philly plane crash that killed 7 and left a neighborhood stunned

That orange flash that electrified the sky over Northeast Philadelphia. The house-shaking explosion that followed. The dwellings that caught fire, and the cars that burst into flames. The power failures.

Understandably, on a foggy, rainy evening when “nothing seemed real,” some residents of one of the city’s densest neighborhoods wondered if they were under attack or were witnessing a conflagration.

As investigators attempted Saturday to figure out what caused a medical transport jet taking off from Northeast Philadelphia Airport to crash near Roosevelt Mall the day before, resulting in at least seven deaths and 19 injuries, mental health specialists warned that those images are likely to haunt the people who were in the area for days, perhaps weeks.

But while the extent of the damage was still being assessed and it remained uncertain whether the death toll would climb, given the time of the crash — shortly after 6 p.m. — and the urbanized location, the results might have been far more catastrophic. In part, that evidently was due to the quick actions of emergency responders, who were on the scene within five minutes.

“I’m pretty amazed just how fast the police and the ambulances got there,” Elizabeth Griffin, 31, who was in the nearby T-Mobile store when the crash happened, said Saturday.

At a briefing Saturday afternoon, National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy praised what she called the city’s sense of “unity.”

Homendy did not offer much in the way of details of the board’s investigation, but said a priority was locating the craft’s cockpit voice recorder. Officials said that fragments of the jet may have scattered over several blocks. One piece of debris hurtled through a diner window and knocked a patron unconscious.

In the quest for any shred of evidence, the Philadelphia Police Department was asking locals to send in their crash videos. Debris may have fallen from the jet before it made impact, city Managing Director Adam Thiel said.

The Learjet 55 had just taken off from the airport at 6:06 p.m. bound for Springfield-Branson National Airport in Missouri before continuing to Tijuana, Mexico. The crash occurred instants later, 3.5 miles away on Cottman Avenue near Roosevelt Boulevard.

At the time, light rain was falling, and fog had reduced visibility to six miles, according to the National Weather Service, with a low cloud ceiling. However, it was unclear whether weather was a factor in the crash.

The evidence suggests that the accident was beyond human control, local aviation experts said.

“This happened so fast,” said Arthur Alan Wolk, a Philadelphia-based aviation attorney and pilot.

Six of those killed were Mexican nationals, and the other fatality was that of a person in a vehicle, officials said. Onboard the Jet Rescue Air Ambulance plane were the pilot, copilot, a flight physician, and a paramedic, along with a pediatric patient and her mother, the company said. At Shriners Children’s Philadelphia, spokesperson Mel Bower said the young girl had been receiving treatment for a condition that was not easily treated in Mexico.

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker said that at least 19 people on the ground were injured. They ranged in age from 4 to 85 years old, and suffered injuries from smoke inhalation to severe burns and a skull fracture, said a law enforcement source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Parts of Roosevelt Boulevard and Cottman and Bustleton Avenues remained closed Saturday as investigators combed the scene.

Residents in the area, meanwhile, provided vivid accounts of what they had experienced, with remarkable similarities in details.

“My living room lit up — it was like a big orange ball, and then a boom,” said Robert Fosbennet, 62.

Michelle Peralta, 19, was working the meat register at Los Primos Meat Market. “Everything turned orange. I saw an explosion, and people began screaming,” she said in Spanish.

She followed the trail of smoke to see what had transpired. Police arrived fast and began securing the surrounding areas, Peralta said, and they stopped her, a move she thinks was for the best.

“People around me were crying and screaming, but I felt like in a movie — nothing seemed real,” Peralta said.

Said Gov. Josh Shapiro, who visited the site: “The good people of Northeast Philadelphia this morning at daybreak walked out from their homes, came down from their stoops, and saw carnage in their communities. We also saw the very best of Northeast Philly, neighbor helping neighbor, folks looking out for one another.”

For those who were in the area, the memories are unlikely to dissipate soon, said Jordan Brogan, CEO of the Center for Families and Relationships.

“I think in the coming days, we’re going to see the maybe traumatic symptoms that people might be experiencing who witnessed some of that stuff,” said Brogan, the CEO of the Center for Families and Relationships.

“We’re scared and concerned that some of them might be people that we currently serve, and how that will impact our community and our staff,” Brogan said.

“Usually with this type of stuff, it takes hours, days, sometimes even weeks for people to actually begin to process and recognize what they just witnessed,” said trauma therapist Shari Botwin.

Among the possible symptoms, experts say: difficulty sleeping, having nightmares, reliving certain mental images, and feeling fearful of certain sounds.

Carrying 10 shopping bags, Moura Joselyn and his family of seven had to leave their house on Rupert Street to take temporary shelter at his brother’s house.

Everyone in the family was home when they heard the explosion and felt the ground shake, leaving them “scared half to death,” he said.

”My sister-in-law almost fainted, my daughters were crying,” he added. “We didn’t know what was happening.” With their gas and power shut down, they were forced to leave.

“I have a 4-year-old,” he said. “She doesn’t want to come back home anymore. She cries and says she doesn’t want to hear the sirens.”

Contributing to this article were staff writers Emily Bloch, Ximena Conde, Erin McCarthy, Michelle Myers, and Frank Kummer.