Douglas DC-4 carrying two persons crashes into river outside of Fairbanks

A small plane with two people in it crashed into the Tanana River near Fairbanks and caught on fire. We haven’t found anyone alive.

The airplane left in the morning from Fairbanks International Airport. It crashed and caught on fire about 7 miles away, near a steep hill by the river, said Alaska State Troopers.

Clint Johnson, who is in charge of the National Transportation Safety Board’s Alaska office, said it’s still not clear what happened between the plane taking off and the crash. However, the person in the control tower saw a big cloud of smoke.

Michaela Matherne was on a plane from Galena to Fairbanks, but it had to change course to check the location of a crash site.

“When we were flying, people were guessing that a cabin or fish camp caught fire,” she told The Associated Press using Facebook Messenger.

“We didn’t know what we were looking at until we landed a few minutes later,” she said. “We felt very surprised and upset to hear that. ”

The C-54 is a plane that was used in the military. It is based on the Douglas DC-4, which was also a plane used during World War II. The website www. airlinesnet said that when the DC-4 was popular, it usually had 44 seats for passengers, but most of them have been changed into cargo planes.

The government agency for plane safety called the plane a Douglas C-54. The troopers said it was a DC-4.

Johnson said the NTSB was sending people to look into what happened at the site.

More details about why the flight was happening and where it was going are not known right away.