“You could see the wing straight up in the air from here, this morning”, Myrtle Anelon told Alaska Dispatch News.

The agency said injured passengers are being flown to Anchorage hospitals after the crash Tuesday near the small community of Iliamna (ill-ee-AHM’-nuh).

“Everybody is sad. I mean, it’s just tragic and even if we don’t know the people, it’s still lives taken and people hurt”, she said.

Alaska State Troopers identified the dead as Tony W. Degroot, 80, of Hanford, California; James P. Fletcher, 70, of Clovis, California; and James Specter, 69, of Shavertown, Pennsylvania. Their names were not released.

Johnson said the plane came to rest in some trees. “Clinic personnel from the local airfield were able to arrive and perform an initial assessment”.

The regional office for the National Transportation and Safety Board in Alaska, which investigates plane crashes in the area, could not immediately be reached for comment. Two NTSB investigators were heading to Iliamna later in the day, he said.

In late June, a similar plane crashed during a flight in Misty Fjords National Park in southeast Alaska, killing the pilot and eight people on a shore excursion from a cruise ship.

The plane crashed on takeoff at Eastwind Lake, a mile (1.6 kilometres) north of Iliamna, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Allen Kenitzer said in an email to The Associated Press.

Another Otter was involved in an August 2010 crash in Alaska that killed former U.S. Sen.