Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs Burned shells of abandoned cars and metal debris sat scattered along the charred streets. Soot stained homes that had been engulfed in flames. A crater in a sidewalk outside a Macy’s department store smoldered.Residents in Northeast Philadelphia on Saturday stood in disbelief at the devastation they witnessed in their neighborhood after a small medical plane crashed the previous night near a shopping center. At least seven people — everyone onboard and one person on the ground — were killed, and at least 19 others were injured.“Six o’clock at night — this place is packed,” said William Vitelli, 55, the owner of a used auto parts store, who lives not far from the crash site. “Now it’s a crime scene. It looks like a movie was shot here. It’s just chaos.”Investigators are seeking answers on why the medical transport plane plunged out of the sky, less than a minute after it took off with a pediatric patient and her mother. It was the second aviation tragedy to rattle the country this week, after nearly 70 people were killed in a Wednesday midair collision between an American Airlines flight and an Army helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington.“This is scary to have this plane crash and the one in Washington, D.C., happen in such quick succession,” said Anish Philip, 40, a software engineer, as he stood behind police lines with his two young daughters on Saturday morning. “I would like to believe that the skies are safe, but this is making me question that.”While the wreckage in Washington was limited to the waters of the Potomac, the crash in Philadelphia happened over a series of residential blocks and businesses. The fiery explosion of the crash sent debris, including pieces of the plane, flying into homes and at least one diner. Officials on Saturday said property damage extended across a four- to six-block area.Jennifer L. Homendy, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said investigators were classifying the incident as an accident. She said investigators were still looking for the cockpit voice recorder — though she said it may be fragmented — and encouraged people to notify officials about any debris. Local authorities said that the plane, a Learjet 55, was transporting a young pediatric patient and her mother, as well as a flight crew, from the Northeast Philadelphia Airport. The flight, which had left Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport earlier in the day, was scheduled to head to Springfield-Branson National Airport in Missouri, before heading to its final destination in Mexico.After taking off just after 6 p.m., the flight took a slight right turn, and then a slight left turn before it plunged toward the ground, Ms. Homendy said. The entire flight lasted for less than a minute.An air traffic controller tried several times to communicate with the pilot after the jet took off but got no response, according to an audio transmission. After a long silence, a controller said: “We have a lost aircraft.”President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico confirmed that all six onboard were from Mexico. Two of the victims were from Ensenada, a coastal city south of Tijuana. Claudia Agatón Muñiz, the mayor of Ensenada, expressed her sorrow in a statement on Saturday afternoon. She said that the city would help facilitate the return of the bodies to Ensenada.In a separate social media post, Ms. Agatón Muñiz shared the names of two victims: Lizeth Murillo Osuna and Valentina Guzmán Murillo. Valentina was 11 and her mother was 31, said César Esparza, a family friend whose daughter was classmates with Valentina.He added that Valentina was facing several medical issues as a result of a spinal condition and had been treated at Shriners Children’s in Philadelphia since the end of August. The hospital declined to disclose details but said it was hard to find treatment for her condition in Mexico. “Valentina was always a warrior,” Mr. Esparza said.One of the other victims was Dr. Raúl Meza, according to one of his employers. XE Médica Ambulancias, a Mexican emergency services company, said on social media that its head of neonatology, Dr. Meza, was part of the crew on the air ambulance. Dr. Meza, the company said, graduated as a pediatrician and neonatologist from the National Institute of Pediatrics.“He was brilliant,” said Fernando Avilés, a supervisor at XE Médica, pausing to fight back tears during a phone interview. “He loved guiding young doctors about what to do with their careers. The community of neonatology pediatricians isn’t very big, so he knew everyone and everyone knew him.”Dr. Meza had three different jobs, Mr. Avilés said, and he was working for another emergency services company as part of the flight crew during the accident.“Normally, whenever we had a complex pediatric case or newborns, he wanted to take part,” Mr. Avilés said. “He didn’t care that it was my shift, he always asked to go with the team, especially in the cases of little ones.”Investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the N.T.S.B. were at the site of the crash on Saturday, and local officials in Pennsylvania warned that the toll of the destruction could still climb as investigators combed through the area.“We’ve had a heart-wrenching week in aviation,” Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, said. The neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia is built around, and spreads from, Roosevelt Boulevard, one of the busiest thoroughfares in Philadelphia. The area is choked with rowhouses, apartment complexes, strip malls, and mom-and-pop businesses. It is also home to numerous police officers and firefighters.Residents there saw “carnage in their communities, saw fuselage, saw destruction and saw things that no one should ever have to experience in their neighborhoods,” Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania said at a news conference.Afterward, neighbors were still grappling with the scope of the damage. Andre Boldin, 40, a property manager, stared at a hole left behind by the plane crash only about a hundred yards away while standing behind police tape.“It looked like a mushroom cloud when it happened, very hot and very high,” said Mr. Boldin, who lives just blocks away from the crash site. “It sucked the air out of everything.”At the Four Seasons Diner, a rectangular piece of metal pierced a window in the explosion, leaving a hole now covered by a strip of cardboard. Video from the diner showed a man tumbling out of his booth as his black ball cap blew off his head after being struck in the forehead by the metal.“I’m still shaken,” said Odalis Acosta, 29, a waitress who served customers Friday night and who picked up the metal object. “My nerves are bad. My stomach’s upset. It’s so sad that so many lives were lost.”Several roads remained closed on Saturday because of the debris, and officials asked people to avoid touching anything that appeared to have come from the plane. Some aviation experts cautioned against conflating the two plane crashes this week without additional information, noting that there is most likely a difference between what causes two aircraft to collide and a single small plane to fall out of the sky.But David Soucie, a former mechanic who once worked at the Federal Aviation Administration, acknowledged that the two recent tragedies can be difficult for many people to absorb.“Risk is very personal,” he said. “The chance of dying in a plane crash is less than getting hit by lightning on a Thursday morning when there’s no clouds in the sky. But those millions and millions to one odds are 100 percent if it happens to me.”Billy Witz, Mark Walker, Neil Vigdor, Aimee Ortiz, Hank Sanders, Isabella Kwai and John Yoon contributed reporting. Aline Corpus contributed reporting from Tijuana. Jack Begg contributed research.
