Frantic workers ran for their lives as a plane crashed into a Melbourne shopping centre and exploded in a ball of flames.
As workers were preparing to open the Essendon DFO on Tuesday morning, a twin-engine charter plane took off from Essendon airport, quickly lost altitude and slammed into the discount shopping centre, killing the five people onboard.
Staff from the Spotlight store, which took the brunt of the explosion, were in tears and visibly shaken as they spoke to police outside the centre.
There was a gaping hole in the side of the store and water was cascading onto the floor, a witness told AAP.
A group of ten workers was standing outside the centre in their work aprons, holding their faces in their hands as paramedics assessed them.
The entire centre was evacuated, with workers milling around with dazed looks on their faces.
They were among dozens who witnessed the crash or its fiery aftermath.
A woman who worked at Freedom Furniture was crouched down crying on a footbridge opposite the centre as she tried to call people who may have been inside.
A worker from furniture store Nick Scali was starting the day with a quiet coffee outside when the shuddering plane flew above her head.
"If it had been a metre lower I wouldn't be here to be honest," Grace Martin, 28, told reporters.
"It flew over the top of me and it was shaking on the way down and a metre from the top of the roof.
"That's when I ran away and heard the big crash and saw all the flames."
Another witness, Carmel Brown, watched in horror as a massive fireball exploded into the sky.
"There was a big crash and then a big red fireball, like a mushroom," she said.
While the five people on the aircraft were killed , miraculously people inside the shopping centre escaped injury.
The DFO centre isn't likely to reopen until Wednesday.
