Awful, awful news this morn­ing:

Two peo­ple were killed and one was crit­i­cal­ly injured when the KOMO News heli­copter crashed and burst into flames Tues­day morn­ing on Broad Street only yards away from the Space Needle.

Emer­gency per­son­nel imme­di­ate­ly rushed to the scene as thick smoke poured over the city at the height of the morn­ing commute.

Two cars and a pick­up truck on Broad Street were struck in the crash. Occu­pants of two vehi­cles were able to escape with­out injury, but the dri­ver of a third vehi­cle was bad­ly burned.

Wit­ness­es said the thir­ty-eight-year-old Seat­tle man could be seen run­ning from from his car with his cloth­ing on fire, and he was extin­guished by offi­cers at the scene. The man suf­fered burns on his low­er back and arm, cov­er­ing up to twen­ty per­cent of his body, Har­borview hos­pi­tal spokes­woman Susan Gregg said. He was orig­i­nal­ly list­ed in crit­i­cal con­di­tion but was upgrad­ed to seri­ous con­di­tion Tues­day after­noon, Gregg said, adding the the man will even­tu­al­ly need surgery for his burns but not immediately.

Inside of the chop­per were pilot Gary Pfitzn­er and vet­er­an KOMO pho­tog­ra­ph­er Bill Stroth­man, both of whom worked for Sin­clair Media Seat­tle as contractors.

(Sin­clair pur­chased Seat­tle-based Fish­er Com­mu­ni­ca­tions last year in a megadeal that saw the once inde­pen­dent Pacif­ic North­west media group swal­lowed up by a nation­al con­glom­er­ate with right wing own­er­ship. It now owns KOMO, KATU, and a num­ber of oth­er radio and tele­vi­sion sta­tions in the region).

The heli­copter, a tem­po­rary replace­ment for the actu­al Air 4 (which is in the shop for upgrades), had been tak­ing off from the roof of Fish­er Plaza around twen­ty min­utes before eight o’clock when some­thing went ter­ri­bly wrong. Appar­ent­ly full of fuel, it crashed and then burned after hit­ting the ground, cre­at­ing a night­mar­ish scene adja­cent to the Space Nee­dle and Fish­er Plaza that hor­ri­fied bystanders.

Fire­fight­ers rushed to Broad to put out the fire and tend to the injured on the ground. Sad­ly, Pfitzn­er and Stroth­man were dead.

KOMO sud­den­ly found itself in the posi­tion of report­ing on the death of two of its own as the lead sto­ry for the morn­ing, yards from its own newsroom.

And report it did, though crew and reporters alike under­stand­ably strug­gled to keep their com­po­sure. Anchor Dan Lewis, enroute to the White House to talk to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, rushed back to Fish­er Plaza to be with the KOMO family.

Accord­ing to eye­wit­ness Chris McOl­gan, who had a front-row seat to the dis­as­ter from his own vehi­cle: “It just blew up instant­ly… Noth­ing could have been done.”

The heli­copter, which the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion con­firmed to be a Euro­copter AS350, is owned by Heli­copters, Inc. of St. Louis, Mis­souri. The com­pa­ny says on its web­site that it “spe­cial­izes in the design/build and leas­ing of news gath­er­ing heli­copters for tele­vi­sion and radio sta­tions nationwide.”

The Euro­copter AS350 is a sin­gle-engine heli­copter man­u­fac­tured by Air­bus in France. It was designed by Aérospa­tiale, which lat­er merged with Daim­ler-Benz Aero­space AG to cre­ate the Euro­copter Group in 1992.

The merg­er of Euro­copter Group’s own­ers made the com­pa­ny a divi­sion of Air­bus, and it was renamed Air­bus Heli­copters in 2000.

The AS350 is con­sid­ered a ver­sa­tile chop­per; it has been in pro­duc­tion since the 1970s. In 2005, an AS350 was land­ed on Mount Ever­est by a test pilot. It is used by the Los Ange­les Police Depart­ment and the Unit­ed States Bor­der Patrol.

The Nation­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Board said in a tweet that it was inves­ti­gat­ing the inci­dent. Air crash­es always inves­ti­gat­ed by the NTSB, as are rail­way acci­dents and major high­way mishaps like the Skag­it Riv­er Bridge col­lapse. NTSB per­son­nel are already at the crash site, work­ing with first responders.

KIRO TV said in a state­ment that it was ground­ing its own heli­copter, Chop­per 7, out of an abun­dance of cau­tion, until the air­craft can be inspected.

The Space Nee­dle, Expe­ri­ence Music Project, Chi­hu­ly Gar­den and Glass and Seat­tle Mono­rail are closed and will remain closed for the rest of the day. The Mono­rail may be out of ser­vice for the rest of the week while author­i­ties inves­ti­gate the tragedy.

Local polit­i­cal lead­ers offered their sym­pa­thies to KOMO.

“I just returned from Fish­er Plaza where, as you know, a KOMO Air‑4 news heli­copter crashed at take­off this morn­ing,” said Seat­tle May­or Ed Mur­ray at a news con­fer­ence at City Hall. “Two indi­vid­u­als, both KOMO employ­ees, were trag­i­cal­ly killed. In times like this, we’re remind­ed that the media — like many of us — are also pub­lic servants.”

“I met with the fam­i­ly of one of those who is deceased as well as with many of their cowork­ers. As you can imag­ine, they are in a state of shock, and they are dev­as­tat­ed. On behalf of Seat­tle, I want to express my deep­est con­do­lence to the fam­i­lies of both the vic­tims and to all their col­leagues at KOMO. Our thoughts and prayers are with you dur­ing this incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult moment. Our thoughts are also with those who have been injured in the situation.”

“This morn­ing two mem­bers of the KOMO news fam­i­ly were killed in a trag­ic crash,” said Gov­er­nor Inslee. “Tru­di and I send our con­do­lences to their fam­i­lies and to the men and women at KOMO who, despite the per­son­al impacts of this tragedy, have been report­ing on this loss with impres­sive pro­fes­sion­al­ism and grace. Our hearts go out to you. I know the peo­ple of Seat­tle – and the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton – are keep­ing you in their thoughts. We also hope for the best for those injured.”

“My thoughts and prayers go out to the fam­i­lies of Bill Stroth­man and Gary Pfitzn­er and to the entire KOMO fam­i­ly,” said Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell. “Today’s tragedy is an unimag­in­able loss for Seattle’s jour­nal­ism com­mu­ni­ty. Today, we are all thank­ful for the jour­nal­ists who face risks every day to report the news in our communities.

“I join Wash­ing­to­ni­ans in offer­ing our deep­est con­do­lences to the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims of this hor­rif­ic acci­dent, and pray­ing for the safe recov­ery of those injured. And we thank Seat­tle first respon­ders and the Nation­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Board for their quick response to this trag­ic incident.”