Seaplane pulled from Columbia River after hitting power line in Tri-Cities

A floatplane clipped and broke a power line that crossed the Columbia River to Clover Island on Wednesday afternoon, after appearing to come close to hitting the cable bridge.

Pieces of the small plane landed upside down in the water near the Pasco shoreline about 2:30 p.m.

The pilot and a second person may have still been in the seaplane, according to witnesses. Officials had not released information by 5 p.m. about how many were onboard. Emergency crews were treating the incident as a recovery effort.

A white sheet was draped over the plane wreckage after it was lifted out of the river by a Lampson crane two hours later.

Andrew Waterhouse, 19, a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was crossing the cable bridge when he saw the plane fly west low over the cable bridge and then start to descend, he told the Tri-City Herald.

“Oh man, what a cool plane,” he thought at the time. “He’s going in for a landing on the Columbia. Must be a fun day.”

But then as the plane got to the high tension power line just west of the bridge, it took a small dip as if it was trying to avoid something, Waterhouse said.

“And then I saw him hit the line and the line snapped and (the plane) just went straight into the water,” Waterhouse said.

The pilot appeared to try to go beneath the power lines but hit the bottom line with one of the plane’s wings.

Someone from the shore jumped in the water and people on a boat and on jet skies also tried unsuccessfully to open the doors of the plane, Waterhouse said.

There appeared to be two people in the plane, he said.

While details of the aircraft remain sketchy, the flight did not appear to originate from the Richland or Pasco airports.

Clif Dyer, owner of Sundance Aviation at the Richland Airport, and Malin Bergstrom, owner of Bergstrom Aviation at the Tri-Cities Airport, both said they had no information about the plane, described by witnesses as a small seaplane. “Prayers for those onboard,” Bergstrom said.

Tim Harkins, the Pasco deputy fire chief, said it was a private rather than a government plane.

Lampson sent a crane to help with the rescue and had lifted the plane out of the water by 4:30 p.m. The plane appeared to be intact, but the nose and tail were crumpled.

Benton County Sheriff’s Office was asking boaters to stay off the river in the area Wednesday afternoon. Traffic was backed up on the cable bridge an hour after the crash.

Roughly 20 police and fire vehicles were at the scene. The Benton County Sheriff’s Office launched a boat shortly after the crash to try to help anyone involved. Columbia Basin Dive Rescue crews also responded.

The Benton PUD had a boom truck at the river about 3:30 p.m. to work to restore power that was lost to more than 11,000 customers.

The power outage extended south of the Columbia River from Highway 395 west toward Leslie Road and affected almost 20% of the public utility district’s customers.

Franklin PUD also reported a power outage to about 1,800 customers in Pasco north of the Columbia River to Interstate 182.

The downed line sparked a natural cover fire on the Pasco side of the river, which burned out after spreading across about an acre to land that had burned in a recent fire.

Ellie Conover, Annette Cary, Cameron Probert, Bob Brawdy and Wendy Culverwell of the Tri-City Herald staff contributed to this report.

This is a developing story and will be updated

This story was originally published June 24, 2026 at 3:24 PM.