Officials have reported that there are many dead

(CNN) ––Several people were killed Thursday night when a small plane crashed into a mobile home park in Clearwater, Florida, officials said.

Firefighters responded to the scene of the accident at Bayside Waters Mobile Home Park at 7:15 p.m. local time, city Fire Chief Scott Ehlers said during a press conference Thursday. They found four mobile homes on fire, one of which contained a crashed plane, Ehlers explained.

“I can confirm that we have several deaths on the plane and inside the mobile home that it crashed into,” Ehlers said, without giving an exact figure for how many people lost their lives.

It was unclear Thursday night how many people were on the plane.

Clearwater resident Steven Askari told CNN he heard what sounded like an explosion that shook his entire apartment.

“And the next thing I saw was a huge column of smoke,” he said in one message.

When officials got the first call about the fire at the mobile home park, it was around the same time a report came in that a small plane was experiencing an emergency at the airport, Ehlers said.

The plane eventually went off radar about 3 miles north of the runway, a location similar to a mobile home park.

The aircraft, a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza V35, crashed in a residential area after the pilot reported engine failure, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman told CNN.

Fire Department spokesman Rob Shaw previously reported in a statement that multiple agencies responded to the scene of the accident at Bayside Waters, formerly known as the Japanese Gardens Mobile Home Park.

The fire chief reported Thursday night that other mobile homes that burned have already been evacuated and there are no victims.

The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the incident.

Clearwater police also responded to the mobile home park and will work to secure and maintain the scene, Chief Eric Gandy said during a news conference, adding that the incident is being treated as a serious traffic accident with a homicide.

Clearwater, with over 110,000 residents, is approximately 37 km west of Tampa.