Officials scour charred site of Kentucky UPS plane crash for victims and answers

By BRUCE SCHREINER HALLIE GOLDEN and DYLAN LOVAN Associated Press LOUISVILLE Ky AP The grim task of finding casualties from the firestorm that followed the crash of a UPS cargo plane in Louisville Kentucky entered a third day Thursday as investigators gather information to determine why the aircraft caught fire and lost an engine on takeoff Related Articles Massachusetts Gov Healey backs AG in war of words with U S Attorney over ICE masks This day in History November Abraham Lincoln wins presidency Utah university where Charlie Kirk was killed is expanding its police force Hegseth and Rubio share classified details on boat strikes with congressional leaders Federal agents drive off with -year-old girl after arresting her father in Los Angeles The inferno consumed the enormous plane and spread to nearby businesses killing at least people including a child and leaving little hope of finding survivors in the charred area of the crash at UPS Worldport the company s global aviation hub The plane with three people aboard had been cleared for takeoff Tuesday when a large fire developed in the left wing stated Todd Inman a member of the National Transportation Safety Board which is leading the assessment But determining why it caught fire and the engine fell off could take investigators more than a year The plane gained enough altitude to clear the fence at the end of the runway before crashing just outside Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport Inman disclosed The cockpit voice recorder and statistics recorder have since been recovered and the engine was discovered on the airfield he reported The crash and explosion had a devastating ripple effect striking and causing smaller blasts at Kentucky Petroleum Recycling and hitting an auto salvage yard The child who was killed was with a parent at the salvage yard according to Gov Andy Beshear Certain people who heard the boom saw the smoke and smelled burning fuel were still stunned a day later Stooges Bar and Grill bartender Kyla Kenady declared lights suddenly flickered as she took a beer to a customer on the patio I saw a plane in the sky coming down over top of our volleyball courts in flames she mentioned In that moment I panicked I turned around ran through the bar screaming telling everyone that a plane was crashing The governor predicted that that death toll would rise saying bureaucrats were looking for a handful of other people but we do not expect to find anyone else alive University of Louisville Hospital stated two people were in critical condition in the burn unit Eighteen people were treated and discharged at that hospital or other robustness care centers The airport is miles from downtown Louisville close to the Indiana state line residential areas a water park and museums The airport resumed operations on Wednesday with at least one runway open The status of the three UPS crew members aboard the McDonnell Douglas MD- made in was still unknown according to Beshear It was not clear if they were being counted among the dead UPS commented it was terribly saddened The Louisville package handling facility is the company s largest The hub employs more than people in the region handles flights daily and sorts more than packages an hour Jeff Guzzetti a former federal crash investigator revealed a number of things could have caused the fire as the UPS plane was rolling down the runway It could have been the engine partially coming off and ripping out fuel lines Or it could have been a fuel leak igniting and then burning the engine off Guzzetti noted The crash bears a lot of similarities to one in when the left engine fell off an American Airlines jet as it was departing Chicago s O Hare International Airport killing people he mentioned Guzzetti noted that jet and the UPS plane were equipped with the same General Electric engines and both planes underwent heavy maintenance in the month before they crashed The NTSB blamed the Chicago crash on improper maintenance The crash involved a DC- but the MD- UPS plane is based on the DC- Flight records show the UPS plane was on the ground in San Antonio from Sept to Oct but it was unclear what maintenance was performed and if it had any impact on the crash Golden communicated from Seattle Associated Press reporters Ed White in Detroit Rebecca Reynolds in Louisville Kentucky Josh Funk in Omaha Nebraska Jonathan Mattise and Travis Loller in Nashville Tennessee and Kathy McCormack in Concord New Hampshire contributed