Father Describes How He and His Family Escaped a Plane Crashing Into Their Home

— -- A father's quick thinking helped save his wife and two children when a plane hit their Massachusetts home.

Aaron Rice and his family survived the Sunday evening crash that killed all three on board when it hit the Rice family's home in Plainville, near the Rhode Island border.

"My wife and my boys were upstairs when the plane hit," Rice told ABC affiliate WCVB. "My boys' rooms are the ones burnt out behind me."

"My wife was doing laundry, I was on the ground floor, in the kitchen, when the explosion happened," he said.

Rice said that their home is quite close to a quarry so "you're used to explosions and the house shaking" but he said he quickly realized this was different.

"[When] I saw the fireball going down the back of the house, we realized it was a little more serious and we shouted [at] the kids to get out," he told WCVB.

Police have now made initial identifications of the people on the plane who died as a Tennessee family.

Plainville police told the Associated Press that the victims were Joseph Richard Kalister, an emergency room doctor, his wife Betty and their teenage daughter Nicole, though the identifications are pending a full confirmation from the medical examiner.

The exact cause of the crash is under investigation but the AP reports that the pilot called air traffic control minutes before the crash and reported that he had no engine control.