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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Fire, Ice Keep Crews From Crash Victims 42 Bodies Found In Rubble From Crash Of Russian Plane

Los Angeles Times

Holding out little hope of finding survivors, rescuers broke through layers of ice and battled new flames Sunday as they searched for victims of an airplane crash a day earlier in a residential neighborhood of a Siberian town.

Crews worked around the clock using cranes, bulldozers and other heavy equipment to clear debris from the crash site in Irkutsk. By midnight, searchers had recovered the remains of 42 people.

Officials expect the death toll to rise to at least 65 when rescue workers are able to reach other victims buried in the rubble of buildings destroyed when the huge military transport plane crashed shortly after takeoff Saturday afternoon.

“The problem for the rescuers is the extreme cold,” said Marina V. Rykhlina, a spokeswoman for the federal Emergency Situations Ministry. “The ruins themselves turned into icebergs after the firemen had to pour tons of water on them.”

The Antonov-124 airplane was delivering two Russian fighter jets to Vietnam when it crashed on the outskirts of Irkutsk, destroying a four-story apartment building and damaging five other buildings.

Anxious residents gathered at the crash site Sunday, hoping to learn the fate of missing relatives and friends. But the condition of many of the bodies made identification extremely difficult.

“We have recovered 42 bodies and we have recovered a lot of fragments, like hands, legs, heads and other parts which cannot even be properly identified,” Vladimir A. Vygovsky, a supervisor at the aviation factory where the plane took off, told the Los Angeles Times.

No official cause of the accident has been established. But according to Russia’s Interfax news service, crew members informed the flight control center moments after takeoff that two of the plane’s four engines had failed.

The airplane was loaded with 110 tons of aviation fuel, which flooded the apartment buildings on impact, drenching some of the victims and contributing to the horrendous blaze.

With temperatures below minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit Sunday, rescue workers had to cut through blocks of ice to reach the rubble. When the smoldering ruins and unburned fuel were exposed to the air, they often burst into flames.

“There is very little chance that any more victims can still be alive, considering the weather and the nature of the disaster,” said Dr. Nicholai G. Kazantsev of the Disaster Medical Center, which dispatched nine doctors to the scene. “But there is always a chance we can save someone.”

On Sunday, the government grounded all flights of Antonov-124s, one of the world’s largest planes. The crash was the aircraft’s fifth in the past five years.