Residents and businesses may soon be able to return to the area around Northeast Philly plane crash site
The National Transportation Safety Board has completed the on-site phase of its investigation.

The section of Northeast Philadelphia where a medical transport jet crashed Friday is expected to reopen to residents and businesses as soon as Wednesday after days of investigation into the fiery catastrophe, which killed seven people and injured 24 others.
“We’ll be working literally through the night to clean the streets, to ensure that we have done thorough damage assessment on all the infrastructure,” Philadelphia Managing Director Adam K. Thiel said Tuesday at a news conference. “We really want to make sure that we’re going to be able to, as daylight comes, hopefully start to get everybody back into that area.”
» READ MORE: A crash, an explosion, then mayhem
The National Transportation Safety Board has wrapped up the on-site phase of its investigation, Thiel said, and the Philadelphia Police Department, which is leading the forensics investigation, has also concluded its work at the scene.
It could still be weeks before the NTSB determines the cause of the crash. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Monday that investigators were exploring every possibility, including weather and mechanical failures.
The plane took off from Northeast Philadelphia Airport before plunging to the ground less than a minute later on Cottman Avenue just west of Roosevelt Boulevard on the border between the Rhawnhurst and Castor neighborhoods. The Mexican medical jet made impact in a near-nosedive, burrowing deep into a sidewalk outside the Roosevelt Mall.
Most of the mall will reopen Wednesday, said Kristen Moore, spokesperson for Brixmor Property Group, which owns the mall. The only businesses in the mall area that will remain closed are Raising Cane’s and Dunkin’, Moore said. Both are stand-alone stores located closer to Cottman Avenue and the crash site.
A return to normal can’t come soon enough for residents who saw their neighborhood turned upside down by the deadly crash. Two people remain in critical condition, and officials have cautioned the casualty totals may rise as the investigation continues.
Susan Usilton, who has lived on nearby Leonard Street for all of her 64 years, had just come back home from buying groceries at Acme when she saw a “big red ball” of light and heard an explosion. When she came out, she saw cars in flames and a person she believed was dead on Cottman Avenue.
“It was probably the most scariest thing in my life,” she said. ”It looked like a war zone, it didn’t look like a plane crash.”
More than 300 homes were affected by the crash, city officials said Monday, with at least four completely destroyed. Usilton said her front bay window shattered in the explosion, and she fears her home’s foundation was impacted by the explosion.
The fallout from the crash isn’t limited to residents of that area. Four Philadelphia police officers have reported pain in their lungs and stinging in their eyes after inhaling smoke and other burning substances at the scene, said Roosevelt Poplar, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5. One officer was hospitalized for smoke inhalation, but was released and is stable, Poplar said.
The union sent a memo Tuesday encouraging officers at the scene who are experiencing health issues to file a report and get checked out. He said the union opened its headquarters on Tuesday and is providing counselors and mental health support.
“Anything could come up in the future,” Poplar said, from “breathing in fumes or whatever else.”
More than 400 officers responded to the crash that night, he said, “running to danger as others are running away.”
“We know there was jet fuel involved, so anybody at that scene who was not wearing protective breathing apparatuses could have had that experience,” Thiel said. “Unfortunately, those are exposures that our first responders experience frequently, and we have a lot of mechanisms in place through our various health plans and other things to ensure that they are taken care of.”
Police department leaders, he said, “take the health and safety of our sisters and brothers very seriously.”
While the appearance of normal daily life may soon return to Cottman Avenue, the crash is likely to stay with many Philadelphians for much longer.
Dominique Goods-Burke, a day bake supervisor at the High Point Cafe in Mount Airy, was at the Roosevelt Mall when the medical jet struck, causing her car to catch fire. As a result, she is “in critical condition but … responding well to the medication and treatment,” according to a GoFundMe organized by the High Point community to “support her home and kids while she is fighting to get better.”
In Harrisburg, Gov. Josh Shapiro began his 2025 budget address on Tuesday by acknowledging the tragedy Philadelphians experienced Friday — and the high hopes they have for the Eagles’ second visit to the Super Bowl in three years.
“Right now in Northeast Philly, people are walking around in the Eagles green, excited about the Super Bowl while at the same time trying to process the horror of what happened on Cottman Avenue on Friday night,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro offered prayers for the families of the victims of the crash, which killed seven and injured dozens. He also noted the tragedy exemplified the resilience of Pennsylvanians and “our willingness to band together to make it through tough times.”
Staff writers Earl Hopkins, Katie Bernard, Rob Tornoe, and Nick Vadala contributed to this article.