Rescue teams detail 'horrors' they saw underwater when trying to salvage remains of American Airlines crash victims as death toll rises

The search for the bodies of those who died in the DC plane crash last week continues.

On Wednesday (January 29), an Army helicopter carrying three soldiers and an American Airlines plane with 64 people on board collided with one another.

The two aircraft then plummeted into the Potomac River, where rescue teams are still working to recover the deceased.

At the time of writing, 55 of the 67 people who died have been recovered from the water.

The conditions the rescue teams are working in have been described as 'tough'.

Matthew Schanck, an International Maritime Search and Rescue & Emergency Response Expert, told BBC News: "There's ice in the river, it's particularly cold and that makes it very challenging to [rescue] crews.

"There's not a lot of time to really try and locate any survivors and rescue them because of the cold."

The waters are so cold that one diver from the Metropolitan Police Department had to be rushed to hospital to be treated for a 'hypothermia situation'.

The diver in question has since been released and is 'doing fine', said Washington DC Fire and EMS Chief, John Donnelly.

"We’re happy to report that he’s doing fine, and that that’s the only injury we have the today," the chief shared, as per NBC News.

He added yesterday (February 2): "For the rest of the day, the salvage crews are continuing to survey the site and get ready for tomorrow."

Elsewhere, rescue personnel have spoken out on the 'horrors' they've seen so far.

Brian Entin, from NewsNation, reported that a firefighter had told him that they're all 'emotionally wiped out after seeing the horror [of the crash] up close'.

In a follow-up tweet, Entin went on to share: "The firefighter I met explained that the water is actually very clear. With flashlights they saw horrible things when they arrived."

A diver working the American Airlines crash scene in DC was taken to the hospital with hypothermia.
He is doing fine now, the chief says.
The firefighters are working very hard -- spoke to one yesterday - they are emotionally wiped out after seeing the horror up close.

— Brian Entin (@BrianEntin) February 2, 2025

Many questions remain about what happened last week to cause the fatal crash, but there are hopes that the two aircraft black boxes will help officials piece together the tragedy.

Speaking about the importance of the devices, Senior Army aviation adviser Jonathan Koziol said: "There’s a lot of experts out there, but until we get the data from the black boxes, that’s the only truth, and we won’t know that for a little bit."

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