Two nurses had egressed from the nursing home and one passerby after hearing the noise from the craft hitting the ground.
So it must have hit the ground pretty hard.
They carried one of the severely injured away before the craft became completely ingulfed in flames. According to the passerby they had trouble putting the fire out on the one survivor's body as he kept reigniting from the fuel soaked clothing. They got no response from the other two.
So you just have to guess it was appox a couple of minutes after impact and respond before the fire had grown enough to force them away.
Doubtful that O2 would have been a cause of the incident.

VFD

They were west bound until what ever happened, happened to them. The direction that the wreckage is now facing would be north, requiring at least a 90 degree turn to the right.

A relative large airfield was 2.5 miles due south of the accident site, Wiley Post Airport (KPWA). Although Wiley Post is a controlled airport, the tower was closed, it does not open until 06:00.

For those that are seemingly focusing on an O2 fire in the cabin, I would caution you that there is no confirmation that there was a fire in the cabin. Two other witnesses have come forward and neither of them reported seeing such.

Witnesses statement
 

I am no more saying that there was a fire in the cabin, than I am saying was no fire in the cabin. It is just that this point, it cannot be taken for granted.

In one accident report I studied at the NTSB school, a "flash" was observed coming from the aircraft just prior to impact. The flash turned out to be the strobe light.

Sometimes if one places too much importance on an eyewitness report, other factors can be overlooked. There are eyewitnesses that have not a clue about aircraft, then there are eyewitnesses that are professionals in aviation. Unfortunately usually it is the former that witness the vast majority of aircraft accidents.

Even on-board 'witnesses' can be severely wrong. I recall one accident where the lone survivor said 'we must have hit an unlit crane' when every other piece of data (radar, GPS, lack of damage to cranes, lack of damage to airframe and rotors) said there was no crane involved.

Con, my take on the discussion has been that there has been no suggestion of a fire in the cabin, merely talk of the dangers of the gas and what it is capable of.And some of the very worse witnesses are fellow aviators. Remember during an accident investigators course we were shown a film of an aircraft taking off and subsequently crashing, and were asked questions as "expert" witnesses.
Type of aircraft? Answer F-86, Wrong - actually a G91
Cause of accident? Answer engine fire ("smoke" seen throughout take off roll) Wrong - "smoke" was spray from a water drenched runway. And so it went on.

Early on in the thread.....Con Pilot told us local news reports had reported witnesses saying there was a cabin fire....and noted how unreliable such reports can be.

I then brought up the topic of O2 Fires as one possibility for a cabin fire.

If anyone stretched that to being the cause of this crash....that is on them as at this point none of us have any idea what caused this tragedy.

Condolences to all.

When getting endorsed on machines there is always something that sticks firmly in the cranium.
In my instance on this type I was sternly administered to, "take care in case of engine fire," and what to do about it quick time with various pointed references to the onboard fire extinguisher, its accessibility and currency date.
. I was berated with, "it has been known to happen more than once". Observe eyes rolled etc.

But of course I am suggesting nothing,

However I did carefully observe thereafter several quite hard fluid and air lines in the upper baggage compartment, quite some with fraying and small leaks as the particular aircraft was close in time to the big tear down inspection.

That is very true, sometimes ever 'expert' witnesses get it wrong. In the NTSB Aircraft Accident investigation school I attended, the class was shown a video. It was a video of an midget aircraft class air race in Reno, Nevada.

We were only told to watch the video, nothing else was said, after watching the video for about three minutes, as the group of racing aircraft entered a pylon turn, a wing came off one of the aircraft. The instructor immediately stopped the video and asked, "Which wing separated from the aircraft?"

Three fourths of the class got it wrong.

Now admittedly the entire class was not composed of pilots, actually very few of the class were pilots, but all were aviation professionals. As it turned out, I was the only pilot that got the correct wing the first time.

The point I was attempting to make is, if an accident was witnessed by a school teacher, a policeman and an active professional pilot with years of experience, the testimony of the professional pilot would be given a little more credit. Never the less, all three statements would be investigated.

Oh, believe it nor not, the pilot survived the accident.

From the preliminary report:

http://dms.ntsb.gov/aviation/Acciden...2013120000.pdf

@Matari:

Your link doesnt work, also like the link in the R66 NZ-crash!

skadi

Thanks Gordy, that's the one.

(....thinks, need to find my kid to show me how to work this interweb thingy)