Witnesses of a horrific mid-air plane crash that killed four people near Pemberton described the incident, which resulted in long-weekend campers being showered with debris, as “surreal.”

Michael Greenwood and Desire Labranche were relaxing at their campsite at Nairn Falls provincial campground just after noon on Saturday when they heard a loud “pop” and what sounded like an engine sputtering.

“We looked above, and then the tops of the trees behind us kind of bent forward, and we saw debris falling,” Greenwood said. “Then we heard a big bang and our first reaction was just to run and go see what happened, and there was fire, and a crashed plane.”

Another camper who was the first to arrive at the site of the crash – about 100-200 feet away from Greenwood and Labranche’s campsite – simply told them “They’re gone.”

The man urged them not to look, but it was too late – they saw the burning remains of a two-seater glider, which had been carrying two people. Neither survived.

“It was really, not real at all,” Greenwood said. “I never thought I’d see a plane crash at all, and it’s crazy that it’s just right in front of us. It’s horrible but having the way that it was, there wasn’t much we could do.”

Nearby camper Wes Karsgaard was witness to an even more grisly sight.

"We saw this plane falling out of the sky, half the plane, and the pilot and the unopened parachute behind him, literally 500 feet in front of our trailer,” camper he said.

“Everybody was screaming and yelling, ‘get out of your trailers, there's stuff falling out the sky!’”

At the same time, Terry-Lyn Evans was out for a family walk along a nearby river with her husband, eight-year-old son and dog when they heard what they thought was a gunshot.

“The dog jumped…and then all of a sudden we heard a big bang and a big engine kind of rev, and we looked up in the sky and we saw the plane spiraling down out of the sky right in front of us.”

What she didn’t see was that the plane – a Cessna 150 carrying two people and a dog – had just collided with the glider in mid-air, killing everyone aboard the two aircraft.

“It was really scary,” the Vancouver woman said. “The main plane looked like it had just folded right in half.”

As debris showered the area around them, Evans’ husband tied a plastic bag to a tree in the area so he could show police where to find it, and the family began to walk back to their site.

What they saw didn’t seem real, she said.

“Walking back to the campsite was really quite something to see ‘cause we saw the wings of the airplanes and cupholders and all kinds of debris everywhere, and lots of families that were affected,” she said.

“One family was telling us how they had to keep running site to site and they had small children, trying to get away from the flying debris.”

As helicopters flew overhead and emergency crews flooded onto the scene, campers turned to another for solace, Evans said. The atmosphere at Nairn Falls was noticeably somber that night.

“Really sad,” she said. “I think the sadness hit right when you saw that plane go down. You knew someone had died right there, you didn’t feel like there was much hope.”

Evans, Greenwood and Labranche all said it was astounding that nobody at the campground was injured by falling debris.

“That’s one thing I was just mind-blown about,” Greenwood said. “It’s pretty amazing I guess, in a horrible way.”

The Transportation Safety Board is still investigating the collision and will issue a public report about what happened and whether any systemic safety issues must be address, according to spokesman Bill Yearwood.

"The obvious conclusion we can make is that they didn't see each other in time to avoid the collision," he said.

Pemberton mayor Jordan Sturdy said news of the accident travelled quickly through the community of about 2,400 people.

"We all very much want to understand the cause of this tragedy and how a mid-air collision could take place in an area like this -- I don't understand it," he said.

RCMP have not released the identity of the victims, but confirmed the pilot and passengers of the Cessna plane were from 100-Mile-House while the occupants of the glider were from Pemberton.

With files from CTV British Columbia's Scott Bills and The Canadian Press