Eyewitness: Sound of Plane Crash Like 'Dropping a Dumpster but 10 Times Worse'

By John Schreiber

Twenty-four-year-old Andrea Reaber lives directly behind the hangar at Santa Monica Airport where a twin engine plane crashed on Sunday evening.

Reaber heard the crash and witnessed the explosion. She told Patch, she first heard the crash and then ran outside. "All of a sudden when we got halfway to our fence we saw the explosion and all the smoke." 

The sound of the explosion was "like dropping a dumpster but 10 times worse," she added. "We just heard it hitting the metal [of the hangar].

Reaber said it's the fifth or sixth crash she's remembered seeing at Santa Monica Airport. "We kind of expect [crashes]," she said. "You hear the old [planes] struggling to go up and you hope [the] make it."