A helicopter crashed into the roof of a Hilton hotel in northeastern Australia on Monday, police said, sparking a fire on the building’s roof and requiring a mass evacuation.
An emergency services official said shattered pieces of the helicopter propeller landed in the hotel’s pool and a man with life-threatening injuries was treated at the scene.
Hundreds of guests were evacuated from the DoubleTree by Hilton in the tropical northern city of Cairns after the helicopter crashed at around 1:50 a.m. local time.
Pictures showed a bright cloud of fire on the roof of the hotel.
“They just flew into the building,” a woman’s voice says in a video shared on social media capturing the aftermath as sirens wail in the background.
“It’s crazy, man. Horrible. People lived in it. It just collapsed.”
Caitlin Denning, head of Queensland Rescue Station, said the plane’s propellers had “come loose”.
“One landed on the Cairns Esplanade and a second propeller was in the hotel pool on the ground floor and was on fire,” she told local media.
Queensland Police said “no one on the ground was injured.”
Cairns is a popular tourist centre and offers access to Australia’s famous Great Barrier Reef.
A team of government investigators from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau was dispatched to the crash site.
