Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer was injured Tuesday afternoon when the small plane he was piloting crashed shortly after takeoff and caught fire.
Bauer, 37, was in good condition with injuries to his arm and leg, spokesman Dave Lucas said.
Bauer and a passenger were conscious when rescuers found them, said Senate Clerk Jeff Gossett. The passenger, John M. Leonhardt Sr., 70, was slightly injured, said Leonhardt's wife, Azalia.
The crash happened around 6:15 p.m., shortly after Bauer's plane took off from a privately owned dirt airstrip and clipped some trees, Cherokee County Sheriff Bill Blanton said. The airstrip is near Blacksburg, near the North Carolina line.
Jeremy Elliot, who lives nearby, said he saw Bauer on the ground crawling from the plane and helped pull Leonhardt from the wreckage. Power lines were on top of the plane, he said.
"As soon as we got him out of the plane, about a minute later, it just exploded," Elliot told television reporters.
Aerial news footage showed the twisted wreckage of the plane on fire not far from the runway.
Bauer was the pilot, Azalia Leonhardt said. Her husband, also a pilot, frequently flew with the lieutenant governor and the Mooney M20E fixed-wing single-engine plane had a new engine.
"The plane had problems taking off," she said.
Bauer's chief of staff, Mike Easterday, said the lieutenant governor was expected to stay in the hospital at least until Wednesday morning.
"He's in good spirits," Easterday said. He did not have details on the crash.
The plane was registered to Bunk Aviation in Columbia, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Bauer, a Republican, had flown to the area to visit a friend who had a death in the family, said state Sen. Harvey Peeler.
The weather was sunny with light wind at the time of the crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate, Blanton said.
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Associated Press Writers Jim Davenport, Katrina A. Jackson and Page Ivey in Columbia contributed to this report.
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