The bodies of the three American crew members of a fire extinguisher that crashed in Australia on Thursday were salvaged on Saturday. This is reported by the police of the Australian state of New South Wales Saturday.
The bodies will now be taken to identify. The cause of the accident is still unknown. Australian aviation authorities specified that no evidence has yet been found to assume a technical defect in the aircraft.
On Thursday, the Canadian C-130 Hercules fire extinguisher crashed and, according to witnesses, landed on the ground with a loud blow. There would have been a large fireball.
The plane was rented by a Canadian firefighting company, which helps fight the deadly forest fires in Australia. Such aircraft have an extinguishing capacity of 15,000 liters and are usually deployed in places where firefighters can hardly come.
There is a second C-130 in the area, but it is being grounded to look for possible systematic problems with the aircraft type itself.
A total of 32 people have died in the forest fires since September. An estimated one billion animals have died, around 2,500 homes have been destroyed and an area as large as one third of Germany has been burned down.
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