In the dark stillness of night, a quiet, tree-lined street in a San Diego neighborhood was plunged into tragedy when a plane clipped a main power line and crashed onto the street — turning cars into fireballs and sending hundreds of residents fleeing in a haze of smoke and confusion.

Several people are believed to have died after a small plane crashed into a residential street in San Diego on Thursday morning.

The airport also had filed a notice to pilots called a Notam, informing them that one of the runways had experienced an issue with the lighting system that guides landing planes.