BRAZILIAN JET CRASHES AFTER HITTING BUILDING.

Byline: Associated Press 

The passenger jet was in the air for less than five minutes Thursday before it clipped an apartment building and skidded through the Vila Santa Catarina neighborhood, spilling fuel and igniting cars and homes.

All 90 passengers and six crew members aboard TAM Regional Airlines Flight 402 were killed. At least three Americans were among the dead.

Two bodies were pulled from rubble on the ground, and the death toll was expected to rise as firefighters, civil defense workers, police and volunteers searched the debris amid charred house frames.

Part of the fuselage stuck out of a garage roof. The narrow, winding streets of tile-roofed houses were littered with pieces of twisted metal and melted plastic.

The Fokker 100 jetliner took off from Sao Paulo's Congonhas airport at 8:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. PST) and was en route to Rio de Janeiro when it crashed only a mile from the runway, said civil defense Sgt. Carlos Santana. The weather was sunny and clear.

Gerson de Paula, a 27-year-old hairdresser, said the plane clipped an apartment building, hit the ground and skidded along the street, spilling fuel and igniting cars and homes.

``When we arrived, we saw cars burning, houses demolished and parts of bodies amid the wreckage,'' Col. Leopoldo Correia of the Sao Paulo fire department said.

Joao Cardoso rushed out of his house and saw ``a river of fuel on fire flowing down the street,'' destroying dozens of parked cars and houses.

One man staggered down the street, and a neighbor, Conceicao de Souza Gomes, tried to help.

``I heard an explosion, and I saw a man with his hair on fire. I put it out with some rags,'' she said. ``He was still conscious and saying, `Help me, for the love of God.' '' An ambulance took the man away.

Thirteen people were treated for shock, burns and minor injuries at a local clinic. Seven were hospitalized, one in serious condition with burns.

Rescue workers pulled charred bodies from the debris, covered them with sheets of black plastic and lined them up along a sidewalk before taking them to the city morgue.

Police asked families to bring dental records to help identify the 98 victims.

``There's no sense in (relatives) just coming (to the morgue), because they won't recognize anyone,'' said Roberto Pacheco de Toledo, head of the police's Special Operations Group.

At least three Americans were on the plane, the U.S. consulate in Sao Paulo said.

Citibank identified one as David Francis Tobolla, a financial director at the company. His hometown was not released. A second was identified as David Andrews, 49, of San Jose, a vice president of Behring Diagnostics Inc.-Americas, a subsidiary of the Hoescht pharmaceutical group. The third was not identified.

The Brazilian subsidiary of Italian dairy giant Parmalat said its sales director Louwerins Hoogerheide, a Dutch citizen who lives in Brazil, was among the victims.

TAM did not know the nationalities of the passengers.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

PHOTO Rescue workers search through the rubble in Sao Paulo, Brazil, after a jetliner crashed when it clipped an apartment building.

Associated Press