A Lake Travis Fire Rescue fire engine unit was among the first on the scene at the plane crash at about 10 a.m. yesterday that injured several people and ignited a fire at the Echelon 1 building in northwest Austin.

Three LTFR personnel were in the Dave & Buster’s parking lot across the street to train with members of Westlake and Pflugerville fire departments when a single-engine Piper Cherokee PA-28-236 Dakota struck the building in the 9400 block of Research Boulevard.

Joseph Andrew Stack, a private plane pilot whose nearby home was on fire at roughly the same time, reportedly owned the plane, according to Austin American-Statesman reports.

LTFR spokesman Lt. Robert Abbott said the three fire departments’ units responded almost immediately.

“They were in the vicinity right when it happened and responded almost right after the plane hit,” Abbott said. “Everybody knew it was some type of explosion, but some bystanders said they saw the fire units on the scene before they knew what happened.”

When they arrived, the firefighters battled a huge volume of fire with a defensive fire suppression strategy from outside the building to keep it from spreading, he said.

They also conducted a ‘hot lap’ around the building to assess its state and determine that only one plane had struck it.

As more firefighting and command units arrived, the chain of authority shifted under the Incident Management System and LTFR firefighters engaged in a more general attack.

Abbott declined to release the names of the LTFR firefighters because of the City of Austin Fire Department’s pending investigation, but said that they fought the blaze for about two hours.

He noted that LTFR firefighters engaged in fire suppression seamlessly because of an automatic aid agreement with the City of Austin.

“If we weren’t using the same playbook, it could have been problematic,” Abbott said.