OAKLAND PARK, Florida – A small plane sputtered and dove into a house shortly after taking off from a local airport yesterday morning, slicing the home down the middle into two charred pieces. The pilot was killed.

The plane, believed to be a twin-engine Cessna 421, crashed around 11:20 am, and the house burst into flames. The owner’s nephew barely escaped the catastrophe, leaving just before the aircraft hit to visit his aunt.

“For now, it’s a bit difficult to explain how I feel,” said Oscar Nolasco, 52, who has lived in the home for nearly 20 years. “Everything is gone.”

The house was about two miles from the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport, where the plane had just taken off. The pilot, Cecil A Murray, 80, of Tarmac, did not survive, said Broward County Sheriff Al Lamberti.

The smell of fuel hung in the air hours after the crash and the shell of the aircraft was sandwiched between two walls of the beige house. The home’s driveway was black, but its white mailbox was still standing.

When the plane began to fail, Rick Cunningham heard a “spitting and sputtering” while he was painting a house down the street. Then, he saw the plane coming in sideways, and it nosedived into the ground, he said.

Cunningham, 52, ran over to the house and knocked the bedroom windows down to see if there was anyone inside, but after a few minutes he had to leave. “The heat was just too intense,” he said.

The plane was headed to Fernandina Beach, just outside Jacksonville, where airport officials expected it to land around 1 pm. The pilot, who had logged about 23,000 hours of flying since 1985, was travelling there to sell it, Lamberti said.

But after take-off, something went wrong. Shortly after it got into the air, it reported trouble to the tower, and the tower cleared it to turn around and land, said Chaz Adams, an airport spokesman. It never made it.

Though the fire was quickly controlled, firefighters were trying to isolate fuel in the debris, said Oakland Park Fire-Rescue Chief Donald Widing. A utility company also cut power in the area to about 1,645 customers because they were not able to get in to assess damage to power lines.

Nolasco said he and his nephew, Alex Martines, were staying in a hotel and getting assistance from the Red Cross. When authorities called him to tell him about the crash, Nolasco said he thought it was a joke.

“The house was a total loss,” said Broward Sheriff’s Office spokesman Mike Jachles. “The plane went right into the centre of the house.”