Hundreds of have been evacuated after a helicopter crashed into the roof of a Far North Queensland hotel in the early hours of this morning.
Police have declared an emergency around the DoubleTree by Hilton on Cairns Esplanade and evacuated up to 400 after the crash, which happened shortly before 2am, a Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) spokeswoman said.
Hotel guest Alastair Salmon woke up to "a colossal ear-deafening bang". He and roommate Harry Holberton were on the third floor.
Mr Holberton said the crash felt like a bomb going off, with flames "rising up the side of the building".
"Suddenly all the alarms start going off and then [] start evacuating with police yelling 'get out, get out, get out'."
Mr Salmon, who had travelled from London, said he first mistook the helicopter's rotor blade for a lamppost.
"Then we looked up there and you could see this massive hole in the window of the building," he said.
The pair were let into the hotel to get their belongings.
"All over the hotel there was debris, parts of a windscreen," Mr Holberton said.
Mr Salmon said he could see "small fragments of what looked like a helicopter" in the hotel's courtyard.
Wayne Leonard, who lives 100 metres from the hotel, said he woke up to a bang.
"It was very loud — I thought it might have been a tower on top of the building exploding, it was that sort of a sound," he said.
"When I went and looked out the window I could see huge big flames on the top of the building."
Earlier QAS senior operations supervisor Caitlin Denning said it would have been "frightening to hear".
"There's been reports it sounded like a bomb, and seeing smoke and fire from that, a lot of the occupants of the hotel were very unsure the situation at the time.
"There is a lot of unease at the evacuation centre."
It's unknown how many were in the helicopter, or their condition.
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