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Nine people remain missing as authorities sift through the wreckage of the UPS cargo plane crash in Louisville, Kentucky, that killed at least 12 people this week, Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said Thursday.
Greenberg said at a news conference that the number of people unaccounted for went down from 15 on Wednesday to nine. Kentucky officials said Wednesday that the three crew members on board were among the dead, and that a young child was thought to have been killed in the explosion.
The mayor cautioned that more bodies may be recovered in the coming days as authorities sift through the huge debris field left behind from the horrific crash.
“There’s so much charred, mangled metal, that not all the bodies may have been located until you look underneath certain things,” he said. “And so that is going through the various layers of debris on the field that will begin now — everything to date has been just looking at what can be seen without moving debris.”
The crash occurred Tuesday after the left engine of the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 plane caught fire during takeoff and immediately detached, according to officials. UPS Flight 2976 was heading for Honolulu.
Video of the crash posted on social media appears to show the plane on fire just before it crashed into a series of buildings south of Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, destroying the surrounding area. The plane had around 38,000 gallons of fuel on board, according to officials. Satellite images show the debris field extending more than a half-mile.
“You hear people say, ‘Oh, you only see that in the movies.’ This was worse than the movies,” Greenberg said. “Half a mile long, standing there where you could just see the destruction, the charred mangled metal, some cases at that point, there were still some smoke rising piles of debris.”
Sean Garber, who owns Grade A Auto Parts and Scrap Metal Recycling, said four of his company’s 18 buildings were destroyed by the blast. The crash also affected Kentucky Petroleum Recycling, which declined to comment.
“There was a huge ball of fire and massive multiple explosions occurring all around and obviously people running and screaming,” Garber told NBC News.
Garber said that approximately two dozen people were in the buildings at the time.
The National Transportation Safety Board is looking at the maintenance history of the plane, with help from FBI forensic investigators. The FBI’s involvement is standard procedure and does not suggest that authorities suspect terrorism.
NTSB member Todd Inman said at a press conference Wednesday that officials had recovered the plane’s black boxes — which contain cockpit voice and flight data recorders — and sent them to Washington for analysis. He suggested that the black boxes appeared to be in good condition.
The crash occurred in the middle of the longest government shutdown in the nation’s history. Amid the shutdown, federal employees, including air traffic controllers, are not being paid for their work, exacerbating existing staffing shortages.
In an appearance on Fox News on Thursday morning, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy shot down concerns that the crash was related to the government shutdown.
“This was not an air traffic controller issue. I want to be clear on that,” he said. “This appeared more mechanical. But we do have the flight and data recorders, those are in the process of being analyzed and will tell us what was happening on that aircraft.”
UPS CEO Carol Tomé said in a message to employees that “our hearts continue to be with all who have been impacted.”
“I am incredibly grateful to our team in Louisville for their grace and professionalism,” Tomé said in the message, shared on X by UPS. “We are not alone in this moment and from the notes I’ve received from around the world, I know that solidarity and empathy are powerful forces in healing. United, we are strong.”
UPS is the largest employer in Louisville, with more than 25,000 of its employees based in the metropolitan area. The company calls the Louisville International Airport “the centerpiece of the company’s global air network,” with roughly 400 of its flights arriving and departing each day, according to its website.
The last UPS crash occurred in 2013, when a cargo plane crashed near Birmingham, Alabama, killing two pilots.
Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport remains open, with two of its runways in operation, Greenberg said.
The mayor added that a vigil for the victims will take place in Louisville on Thursday evening.
