LOUISVILLE, Ky.—A young child and 11 others died when a UPS cargo plane crashed at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport on Nov. 4, according to Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear.
The child was shopping with a parent at one of the businesses that was heavily impacted by the devastating crash.
“This [child] was probably ... part of a family that was here with a parent,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear stated during a press conference on Nov. 5.
Beshear said several individuals are still unaccounted for as crews transitioned from a search and rescue mission to a recovery mission on Wednesday.
The NTSB, which arrived on Wednesday, confirmed that the left engine detached from the plane’s wing during takeoff.
Todd Inman, a member of the NTSB, said a large plume of fire ignited in the area of the left wing, and once the plane cleared the fence at the end of the runway, it crashed into businesses located just off the airport’s property.
“A post-impact fire ensued, which covered, approximately, almost a half of a mile,” Inman shared.
The cargo plane hit two small businesses, including Kentucky Petroleum Recycling and Grade A Auto Parts. It miraculously missed Stooges Bar & Grill, a family-owned restaurant in town, the Epoch Times confirmed.
The identities of the victims have not yet been released.
UPS Communications confirmed that a McDonnell Douglas MD-11, manufactured in 1991, had three crew members onboard when it crashed.
Beshear said the coroner was on site today removing bodies, and indicated that the condition of the scene “may make it difficult to identify” some of the victims.
Beshear, Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg, and U.S. Congressman Morgan McGarvey toured the crash site Wednesday afternoon after greeting members of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in the morning.
“It’s like the scene of a Terminator movie,” McGarvey said. “It is burned and mangled wreckage beyond anything I’ve ever seen. The smells. The sights. These are things that are not going to escape us when we close our eyes tonight.”
Greenberg said, “What we just saw at the crash site is devastating beyond words.
“The impact and the intensity of the wreckage, the charred wreckage, is unlike anything I’ve seen before and certainly nothing that I ever want to see again.”
Jefferson County Public Schools will reopen on Thursday, after a shelter-in-place order canceled classes on Wednesday.
Todd Inman, a member of the NTSB, confirmed that the aircraft’s black boxes have been recovered and a team of 28 people will be in Louisville for nearly a week investigating the cause.
The NTSB stated that the flight had not been delayed and the aircraft had not undergone maintenance work before takeoff.
A preliminary crash report is expected to be released in one month.
Inman told The Epoch Times that staffing shortages caused by the government shutdown did not contribute to the UPS plane crash.
“[The] SDF tower, from what we can see and what we’ve been told, was at its proper complement, I don’t have the exact records,” Inman said, referring to the tower where the controllers operate.
The NTSB member added: “Our investigators have been working since the day-start of the shutdown started. I’ve been working every day since then. We’ve only recalled a few individuals yesterday just to handle some of the logistics of our travel and our movements.”
Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport had one runway operational as of noon on Wednesday.
As of 3:00 p.m. ET, 29 flights have been canceled and 50 others were delayed at Muhammad Ali International Airport, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware.