A Bayport man who was on the Delta Air Lines flight from the Twin Cities to Toronto said the scene after the jet flipped onto its roof while landing on Monday afternoon was “mass chaos.”

“There was like a big fireball out the left side of the plane,” John Nelson, 47, of Bayport, told CNN. “I was upside down, the lady next to me was upside down. We kind of let ourselves go and fell to hit the ceiling, which is a surreal feeling. And then everybody was like, ‘Get out! Get out! Get out!’ We could smell the jet fuel. Even now, I smell like jet fuel.”

Nelson was one of the 80 people on board Delta Flight 4819 from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP). The flight, operated by a Delta subsidiary, Endeavor Air, crashed around 2:15 p.m. Eastern time.

Winds were gusting up to 40 mph during the day at Toronto Pearson Airport, according to the Meteorological Service of Canada.“The winds were super gusty,” Nelson told CNN. “The snow had kinda blown over the runways. It was routine, but like it was noticeable that the runways were kind of in a weird condition.”

Nelson said that when the plane, a Bombardier CRJ-900 aircraft, landed, it hit the ground “super hard.”

“The plane went sideways, and I believe we skidded on our side and then flipped over on our back,” he said. “Where we ended up, there was like a big fireball out the left side of the plane. It was mass chaos.”

Nelson said he and other passengers crawled out of the back of the plane.

He took a video of the plane, lying belly up, that he posted on Facebook as he was leaving the scene.

“We’re in Toronto,” he said in the video. “We just landed. Our plane crashed. It’s upside down. The fire department is on site. It’s upside down. Most people appear to be OK. We’re all getting off. There’s some smoke going on.”

Helping each other

Another Minnesotan on the flight was Peter Carlson, a vice president at St. Louis Park-based Lifespark. Carlson told the CBC that he rushed to help a mother and her young son off the plane after it crashed.

In an interview with “The National,” Canada’s public broadcasting company’s nightly news and current affairs program, Carlson said his “fathering instinct” took over when he saw the two of them.

When he took his seat belt off, he “crashed down onto the ceiling, which had become the floor because we were upside down,” he said.

Passengers started checking on one another and helping each other off the plane, he said.

“Everyone on the plane suddenly became very close in terms of how to help one another, how to console one another, and that was powerful,” he said. “There was a definite feeling of, ‘What now? Who’s leading? How do we find ourselves away from this?’”

Carlson, a paramedic, said he remembers looking around for the nearest exit.

“You know, you can listen to the pre-flight all you want, but when you’re suddenly upside down, rolled over, everything kind of goes out the door,” he said.

He told the CBC that as he worked to help a woman who was stuck under a chair, he could see liquid pouring over the small windows of the plane. Suddenly, the smell of aviation gasoline permeated the aircraft, he said.

When he finally exited the plane, “it felt like I was stepping onto the tundra,” he said. “It was just snow, just kind of blowing, and I couldn’t really see structures anywhere. I didn’t care how cold it was. I didn’t care how far I had to walk, how long I had to stand. We just all wanted to be out of the aircraft.”

He said he grabbed his phone to take a photo of the scene for posterity.

“I’m not a big phone guy, and I don’t even have social media, but part of me was like, ‘I want to remember this. This may be good for me.’ And so I took a photograph of it and simply sent it saying, ‘This is my reality right now.’”

Carlson said the paramedics who responded to the scene did a fantastic job. After providing care, they listened and “asked just the right questions,” he said. “That was, I think, the most powerful part of today was there were just people — no countries, no nothing. It was just people together helping each other.”

Others on board

Two of the passengers were longtime employees of Eden Prairie-based Starkey Hearing Technologies, company officials said in a statement.

One of the employees, Michael Braunschweig, was videotaped helping people off the plane.

“I was onboard Delta Flight 4819 out of Minneapolis with a colleague when it crashed upon landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport,” Braunschweig said in a statement.

“I am grateful all fellow passengers and crew are safe. Much to my surprise, I was captured on video helping people out of the plane. I am still processing this experience, and while I do, I am asking for privacy for myself and my family.”

Brandon Sawalich, Starkey’s president and CEO, thanked people for reaching out to the company to check on Braunschweig and his colleague.

“I can confirm there were two Starkey employees on board the flight and that both are safe and receiving the care they need,” Sawalich said in the statement. “I have known both valued team members for more than 30 years and my only priority is ensuring their well-being. In this unthinkable situation, they both showed remarkable resilience and strength. (They) will have Starkey’s full support as they recover from this traumatic experience.”

This report includes information from the Associated Press.