Recovery teams that have been searching for the bodies of the victims of the plane and helicopter crash in Washington D.C. have revealed the grim reality they were faced with beneath the surface of the Potomac River.
On Wednesday, January 29, an American Airlines passenger jet carrying 64 people collided with a military helicopter with three soldiers on board, sending both aircraft plummeting into the river below.
Despite a large, immediate search and rescue attempt, tragically all 67 people involved were declared dead hours later.
A recovery effort has been ongoing to collect vital clues for the investigation into the crash, including the black boxes of both aircraft, as well as returning the bodies of those tragically killed.
As of the time of writing, 55 of the 67 bodies of the deceased have been recovered.
The conditions in the icy Potomac River have been described as “tough” for the rescue teams, with Matthew Schanck, an International Maritime Search and Rescue & Emergency Response Expert, telling BBC News: “There’s ice in the river, it’s particularly cold and that makes it very challenging to [rescue] crews.
“There’s not a lot of time to really try and locate any survivors and rescue them because of the cold.”
One diver from the Metropolitan Police Department had to be rushed to hospital to be treated for a “hypothermia situation”, but Washington DC Fire and EMS Chief, John Donnelly later confirmed they’d been released and are “doing fine”.
Donnelly said, per NBC News: “We’re happy to report that he’s doing fine, and that that’s the only injury we have today.
“For the rest of the day, the salvage crews are continuing to survey the site and get ready for tomorrow.”
Other rescue personnel have recounted the “horrors” they found in the water during the recovery effort.
NewsNation’s Brian Entin revealed on X (formerly Twitter): “A diver working the American Airlines crash scene in DC was taken to the hospital with hypothermia. He is doing fine now, the chief says.
“The firefighters are working very hard — spoke to one yesterday – they are emotionally wiped out after seeing the horror up close.
“The firefighter I met explained that the water is actually very clear. With flashlights they saw horrible things when they arrived.”
Questions remain over how the incident occurred as the passenger jet was coming in to land at Reagan National Airport.
Video footage showed the moment the two aircraft collided in mid-air, with the sky being lit up by flames before the helicopter and the plane both plummeted into the water.
Experts hope the black boxes, which have been recovered from both aircraft, will shed light on the moments leading up to the disaster.
Senior Army aviation adviser Jonathan Koziol said: “There’s a lot of experts out there, but until we get the data from the black boxes, that’s the only truth, and we won’t know that for a little bit.”
Audio recordings from the air traffic controllers have also been released, revealing that they’d tried to warn the helicopter to look out for the jet moments before the fatal collision.
Our thoughts remain with the families and loved ones of all affected by this devastating incident.
