Two days after a deadly UPS plane disaster, a candlelight vigil was held Thursday in Louisville to remember the victims and thank first responders, while teams still worked to find or identify people caught in the crash and subsequent firestorm.
“Our hope is that we have located all of the victims at this point. But again, we do not know,” Mayor Craig Greenberg said earlier in the day.
The inferno destroyed the enormous plane and spread to nearby businesses, killing at least 13 people, including a child and three UPS crew on the cargo hauler. No one expects to find survivors in the crash at UPS Worldport, the company’s global aviation hub.
The plane had been cleared for takeoff Tuesday when a large fire developed in the left wing and an engine fell off, said Todd Inman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the investigation.
Meanwhile, UPS Worldport operations resumed Wednesday night with its Next Day Air, or night sort, operation, spokesperson Jim Mayer said. All three runways at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport were also open again.
Death toll rises to 13
Teamsters Local 89, which represents UPS workers, hosted a candlelight vigil, which began with a moment of silence at 5:14 p.m., the approximate time of the crash two days earlier.
“This incident was so sudden, so unexpected,” the mayor told the crowd of 200. “No one had a chance to say goodbye to any of those who we have lost.”
Greenberg disclosed that the death toll had risen to 13.
Bob Travis, a UPS pilot and the union’s president, told vigil attendees that the work of emergency responders, public officials and the community has been “absolutely overwhelming and amazing.”
“Everybody’s seen the video,” he said of the crash. “It’s hard not to.”
Names of pilots released
UPS released the names of three people who died in the plane: Capt. Richard Wartenberg, First Officer Lee Truitt and International Relief Officer Capt. Dana Diamond, all members of the Independent Pilots Association.
Truitt lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and had been a pilot for UPS since 2021, flying the MD-11 airliner, according to Truitt’s LinkedIn profile. Before that, he was a captain for SkyWest Airlines, a flight instructor at Bode Aviation and graduated from The University of New Mexico.
Wartenberg lived in Independence, Kentucky, which sits south of Cincinnati, according to public records.
Diamond, the flight’s international relief officer, lived in Caldwell, Texas, less than a two-hour drive east of Austin, according to public records.
Black box provides insight
Earlier Thursday, Greenberg described the crash site as “horrific,” with “charred, mangled metal.” Part of the plane’s tail, he said, appeared to be sticking out of a storage silo.
“You hear people say, ‘Oh, you only see that in the movies.’ This was worse than the movies,” Greenberg told reporters.
The plane’s last data recordings showed it had reached an altitude of 475 feet (145 meters) and a speed of 210 mph (340 kph) before crashing just outside the Louisville airport, Inman said Thursday.
The engine’s main component and pieces of engine fan blades were recovered from the airfield. Inman said UPS indicated that no maintenance work was performed before the flight “that would delay it in any way.” He noted that investigators will look at video to see what, if anything, was being done around the MD-11 aircraft in preceding days.
The UPS package handling facility in Louisville is the company’s largest. The hub employs more than 20,000 people in the region, handles 300 flights daily and sorts more than 400,000 packages an hour.
Flames, panic and more questions
The crash and explosion caused even more blasts and destruction at businesses in an industrial corridor just outside the airport.
Sabit Aliyev, the owner of Kentucky Truck Parts and Service, still doesn’t know if his business is standing. He said he was inside the shop Tuesday when the burning plane passed by, followed by an explosion. He went outside and recorded what sounded like another explosion.
“It was like hell,” Aliyev said. “There was fire all over. It was sky high.”
He and his workers fled over vacant land but were suddenly trapped by a high security fence until a police officer used bolt cutters to cut open a gate.
Jeff Guzzetti, a former federal crash investigator, said a number of things could have caused the fire as the 34-year-old plane was rolling down the runway.
“It could have been the engine partially coming off and ripping out fuel lines. Or it could have been a fuel leak igniting and then burning the engine off,” Guzzetti said.
Flight records show the aircraft was on the ground in San Antonio from September 3 to October 18. Records found on the FAA Service Difficulty Reporting System states that workers discovered rust in two areas in the bilge area (underneath cabin floorboards, where water and contaminants collect) of the aircraft.
A cracked stringer was also found near the center wing upper fuel tank (stringers run lengthwise along an airplane’s fuselage or wing, transferring loads from the skin to the formers).
These issues were discovered approximately one month ago and could be coincidental to the crash.
(Photo: The Louisville Muhammad Ali Internatoinal Airport Air Traffic Control tower is seen while smoke rises from the crash site of UPS Flight 2976, courtesy of Kentucky Today)
By the Associated Press and Ken Howlett, News Director
