Crash Investigators Find Flight Recorders

Investigators combing a mountainside in the Colombian Andes Friday found the two onboard recorders that likely will reveal why American Airlines Flight 985 from Miami left a safe course down a valley to the Cali airport and crashed into a mountainside to the east.

The death toll in the Wednesdaynight crash stood at 160. After initial confusion, officials said four people survived and were being treated at a hospital in Cali: Gonzalo Dussan of Somerville, N.J., and his 6-year-old daughter, Michelle; Mercedes Ramirez of Blue Springs, Mo.; and Mauricio Reyes, a Colombian student at the University of Michigan at Dearborn.

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said at least 48 of the passengers were U.S. citizens. The plane was carrying 156 passengers and a crew of eight.

An Associated Press reporter described the scene as “a field of bodies” and wreckage. No more survivors were found Friday, but a small brown dog was alive inside an animal carrier. Rescuers called the dog “Milagro,” or “miracle” in Spanish.