Two people suffered serious injuries Monday afternoon when a small plane crashed near a private rural airstrip east of Ridgefield, Washington. Clark County Sheriff's Office deputies responded to the scene near Daybreak Airport, where one victim was flown to the hospital by Life Flight and the other was taken by ambulance.
The crash happened around 1 p.m. Monday near the north end of the unpaved airstrip, according to a Facebook post identifying the aircraft as a Cessna 180, a widely flown single-engine plane. As reported by KPTV, both people aboard the plane were seriously hurt and taken to the hospital, and the Federal Aviation Administration is now investigating the crash. It remains unclear from available reports whether the plane was taking off or landing at the time of the accident, or what specific mechanical or operational factors may have contributed.
A Rugged Airstrip With a History of Trouble
Daybreak Airport, listed under FAA identifier WA46, is a privately owned airfield with a 2,200-foot turf and dirt runway. Federal records catalogued by AirNav note obstructions including 50-foot trees just 1,000 feet from the runway, and instruct pilots that landing there is at their own risk. The airfield has no published instrument procedures and restricts flight practice because of nearby residential ridges, per the same listing.
Emergency response in the area falls to Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue, a regional district that covers 52,000 residents across 125 square miles of north Clark and south Cowlitz counties, according to Clark-Cowlitz Fire Rescue. The district handles fire and medical calls throughout La Center, Ridgefield, and the surrounding unincorporated rural land where Monday's crash occurred.
Not the First Crash at Daybreak
Monday's crash adds to a troubling pattern of general aviation accidents in the skies around Daybreak Airport and nearby Battle Ground over the past decade. In March 2018, a Piper PA-18-150 Super Cub crashed into a wooded area while performing touch-and-go maneuvers near Daybreak Airport, killing the pilot; an NTSB investigation found the aircraft lost control near the approach end of Runway 31, according to Kathryn's Report.
In April 2019, two men died when a single-engine, two-seat plane crashed into a shallow pond at the end of Bjur Road in the Daybreak area south of the East Fork Lewis River, as reported by The Reflector. A passing pilot spotted the downed plane in two feet of water and directed ground crews to the site. The following year, in April 2020, an ultralight aircraft crashed west of Daybreak Airport near Battle Ground, killing its pilot after a local resident reported seeing it go down in a field, according to the Columbia Basin Herald.
More recently, in September 2025, a single-engine Cessna C172F crashed and caught fire near Goheen Airport, another private airstrip north of Battle Ground, killing the pilot on board, according to KGW. And less than three weeks before Monday's crash, a 76-year-old pilot survived with minor injuries when his single-engine plane suffered mechanical failure and went down in Yale Lake in northeast Clark County, before boaters pulled him from the sinking plane.
Why Small Planes Carry Higher Risk
Nationally, general aviation remains far riskier than commercial flying. Preliminary NTSB data compiled by the National Safety Council found 300 onboard fatalities and a fatal accident rate of 0.721 per 100,000 flight hours in general aviation during 2024, compared with zero onboard fatalities in commercial scheduled airline operations, according to Injury Facts. General aviation accounts for more than 90 percent of all U.S. civilian aviation accidents, the organization notes.
Aviation safety research from Panish Shea Ravipudi LLP indicates that pilot or human error contributes to roughly 80 percent of general aviation accidents, while mechanical failure accounts for about 21 percent. The firm's data also points to takeoff and landing as the highest-risk phases of flight for small-plane pilots — the same maneuvers implicated in several of the earlier Daybreak-area crashes.
The Federal Aviation Administration's investigation into Monday's crash is ongoing, and the exact cause has not been determined. The updated medical conditions of the two hospitalized victims have not been released.
