More victims of the deadly American Airlines and Black Hawk helicopter crash have been recovered and identified.
Washington DC Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly announced Sunday evening that 55 of the 67 victims of America’s deadliest crash since 2001 have been identified, an increase from the 42 that were previously identified.
Authorities will now continue to search the Potomac River for the remains of every other person onboard Flight 5342 Wednesday night, which included entire families, young ice skaters, a college student, and all four crew members.
Donnelly said he believes crew members will eventually recover the remains of the 12 other victims of the doomed flight, but they are unsure where the bodies may be, NBC News reports.
‘If we knew where they were, though, we would already have taken them out,’ he insisted. ‘So we have some work to do as this salvage operation goes on, and we will absolutely stay here and search until such point as we have everybody.’
‘Reuniting those lost in this tragic incident is really what keeps us all going,’ Col. Francis B. Pera of the Army Corps of Engineers added.
Crew members are also scheduled to undertake a ‘lifting operation’ on Monday to remove the wreckage from the river.
Portions of the aircraft will then be loaded onto flatbed trucks and taken to a hangar for further investigation.
More than 300 responders are taking part in the recovery effort at any given time, officials said. Two Navy salvage barges were also deployed to lift heavy wreckage.
But the recovery efforts have proved to be challenging thus far, as Donnelly confirmed that a diver with the Metropolitan Police Department had to be transported to a local hospital for hypothermia.
He has since checked himself out of the hospital.
‘We’re happy to report that he’s doing fine, and that’s the only injury we have today,’ the chief reported.
An unidentified firefighter working the scene, however, told reporter Brian Entin he and others are ’emotionally wiped out after seeing the horror up close.’
The firefighter explained that the water was ‘actually very clear’ and with their flashlights, ‘they saw horrible things when they arrived.’
It has since been revealed that the Black Hawk helicopter it collided with may have been flying hundreds of feet outside air traffic control’s predesignated, approved route for the international airport, just outside of the nation’s capital.
The Black Hawk was supposed to be following ‘Route 4’ – a known path at Reagan National that allows helicopters to fly at altitudes below 200 feet to avoid commercial jets arriving at the Virginia airport – sources told The New York Times.
However, the military aircraft, which was marked as a PAT-25, was flying above 300 feet and was at least a half-mile off course when it collided with American Airlines Flight 5342 on Wednesday evening, k! lling everyone onboard.
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