Inside the grueling effort to recover the bodies of all 67 victims from the mangled wreckage of DC plane collision

(CNN) — Families were waiting at the airport to welcome home loved ones when their plane, just minutes from landing, collided midair with a military helicopter in a fiery explosion, plunging 67 lives full of promise into the cold, inky waters of the Potomac River.

The frantic search for survivors started under the cloak of icy darkness. By morning, the mission had turned into a slow and somber search for the remains of everyone on board.

As of Sunday afternoon, 55 bodies have been identified, DC Fire and EMS Chief John Donnelly said, with the search effort hampered by near-zero visibility in the frigid water, sharp pieces of debris and the mangled metal of the wreckage.

Amid heated political speculation on the cause of Wednesday night’s collision and grief-stricken stories from heartbroken loved ones, hundreds of rescue personnel continue to search relentlessly for the remains of every person lost.

“They’re getting home and they’re crashing and falling into really deep sleeps, and then getting up and going back to work and doing it again,” David Hoagland, president of the Washington, DC, Firefighters Local 36, told CNN. “However long it takes, they’re going to be there.”

Days later, dangerous and difficult conditions persist, hindering the careful and deliberate efforts of crews working to recover the bodies of victims trapped deep within the wreckage, beyond the reach of divers.

The recovery effort has been extensive, involving nearly every dive team in the area, including the US Coast Guard, the FBI’s Washington Field Office dive team, DC Fire and the International Association of Fire Fighters.

Here’s how their efforts are unfolding.

Heavier equipment needed to remove remaining bodies

The mangled wreckage in the Potomac River has made the recovery effort especially difficult for dive teams, who have struggled to access parts of the plane’s fuselage. These sections will need to be removed to retrieve the remaining bodies, Donnelly said.

“Things have kind of slowed down this weekend because they’re waiting on a lot more heavier salvage equipment that’s going to be showing up sometime in the next 24 to 36 hours,” Hoagland told CNN on Saturday. “They’re going to be setting up for a pretty complicated operation where they’re going to be removing plane parts from the water on Monday.”

The wreckage of the American Airlines jet broke apart, according to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy. The fuselage was found upside down in three sections in the river, which is about 8 feet deep in some areas.

Divers have been using specialized underwater hydraulic rescue tools capable of cutting metal to try to recover as many victims as possible, Hoagland said.

Asked whether authorities are confident about the location of the remaining bodies, Donnelly said, “We think we know where they are,” but “we won’t know until we’re done.”

“I believe that when we remove the aircraft, that that will help us resolve this number,” he said. “If it doesn’t, we will continue the search.”

The Army Corps of Engineers will start working to remove the remnants of the jet Monday, according to a news release.

Then, engineers will switch their focus to the remnants of the Black Hawk helicopter involved in the collision. They expect to finish removing the wreckage by February 12, the release says.

A US Coast Guard boat equipped with a crane was used Friday to hold the door of the US Army Black Hawk helicopter, allowing for the retrieval of the bodies of all three service members, followed by the “dignified transfer of their remains,” Hoagland said.

The wreckage of the helicopter was located about 300 yards from the plane debris, according to Hoagland. Most of Friday’s recovery operations focused on the Black Hawk.

Recovery teams are planning to bring a larger crane to the Potomac crash site to help reach victims in a section of the wreckage divers can’t access, a law enforcement source told CNN.

The crane, used to remove parts of the Francis Scott Key Bridge after its collapse last March, will be employed to cut and lift pieces of the airplane. This will allow divers to safely recover additional victims who are pinned inside and extremely difficult to access.

“With these really large marine salvage cranes and vessels, as you can imagine, these things are not very seaworthy,” Hoagland said. “They can’t move very fast because they’ve got giant cranes on them, so it’s slow sail to get up the bay and then into the river to get up to DC.”

Rescue teams are also on the water using technology such as sonar scanning to continue their search and deploy divers. Additionally, crews will search sewer lines and conduct aerial operations as dive teams work in targeted areas, according to Donnelly.

Dangerous, difficult and risky conditions

When a direct line to Reagan National Airport rang Wednesday night, Hoagland said, Local 36 first responders expected a routine report of a flight in distress. Instead, they heard: “Crash! Crash! Crash!” he recalled.

As union members rushed to a pier to board a fireboat, burning debris rained down on Potomac. First responders arrived to find wreckage submerged in the shallow water and almost immediately started finding victims, Hoagland said.

Some passengers were still strapped to their seats, but removing them proved difficult as sharp pieces of debris tore the wetsuits worn by first responders.

“They had a lot working against them. They had the current in the river. They had jet fuel all over in the water with them. They had debris. They had ice,” Edward Kelly, general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, told CNN on Thursday. “Like I said, the swift current was a challenge, searching the fuselage – there’s a lot of sharp objects in the cockpit – so it was a very difficult and risky and dangerous rescue attempt.”

At one point, there were close to 50 divers in the water responding to the incident, he said.

“One thing that was a blessing was the civilian dinner boat in DC did a trip up the Potomac yesterday, which actually broke the ice that allowed the smaller boats to respond to the actual crash last night,” he said.

On the night of the crash, emergency crews battled icy, choppy waters, Donnelly said.

“The water is dark, it is murky, and that is a very tough condition for them to dive in. If you can imagine, the river is a large black spot at night with no lights on it, except for a few buoy lights,” Donnelly said.

Friday, search crews continued to exercise caution as weather conditions posed challenges for recovery efforts, Donnelly said. Divers faced intense mud and near-zero visibility, despite the aircraft resting in only a few feet of water.

“That’s actually part of the challenge, is that you’re half swimming, half walking while you’re working. This is very strenuous for our divers or rescue swimmers that are in the water,” Donnelly said, referring to the silt at the bottom.

Saturday, calmer weather — with sunshine and fewer winds — helped with visibility, but ice and debris remained critical hazards, Hoagland told CNN. He added officials are still in the process of mapping the debris field.

“Now that it’s a recovery operation, it’s much more important to preserve evidence so they can investigate the crash, so they’re going to go about it systematically, methodically and intentionally,” Hoagland said.

“They’re doing a good job of cataloging and mapping everything by sonar and figuring out where everything is, but it’s a tedious, long effort.”

With the operation shifted from a rescue to a recovery mission, responders are adopting an approach that prioritizes safety, according to Kelly. For instance, responders will not perform dangerous night dives.

Mental health counselors available to assist first responders struggling

First responders and emergency personnel, who have been working around the clock for days — first desperately searching for survivors, and now recovering remains — are exhausted, Hoagland said, but remain resilient.

“Everybody just really wants to see things through,” Hoagland told CNN. “We’re looking out for each other, and everybody’s getting breaks.”

Recovering the bodies and remains of the victims, especially the children, has been both harrowing and exhausting, Hoagland said, a process that will likely leave a lasting emotional and mental impact on first responders.

To support first responders dealing with the trauma of what they’re witnessing on the scene, the International Association of Fire Fighters has deployed teams of former firefighters trained as mental health counselors to assist with ongoing recovery efforts.

“If somebody’s really just having a tough time and they need to hit the pause button, they can talk to them and help them decompress and process all the trauma they might be experiencing,” Hoagland said.

There are enough teams on the ground for everyone to provide each other with peer support and take someone’s place if they are overwhelmed and need a break, Hoagland said.

Donnelly also emphasized the importance of making sure personnel “understand that the feelings they have are normal and how to get help if there’s any feelings that aren’t going away, the signs and symptoms, if you’re having trouble sleeping, if you aren’t eating well, we don’t want you to drink, we don’t want you arguing with your family,” he said in a news conference Sunday.

The US Coast Guard has Critical Incident Stress Management therapists and chaplains who are waiting for US Coast Guard crews to return to home base and will provide them with mental health support immediately, the agency’s Capt. Patrick Burkett said at the news conference.

“This is not normal, and it’s OK for them to not feel OK,” Burkett said.

“This is a tragedy,” Donnelly said. “We are in a business where we deal with the loss of life or people being hurt and one person is bad, and it’s hard — and 67 is a lot.”

NTSB to start investigation after recovery mission is complete

The National Transportation Safety Board will allow first responders to complete their work before beginning its investigation into the collision, the board’s chair said Thursday.

NTSB Chair Jennifer L. Homendy described it as an “all-hands-on-deck event.” The NTSB had a full crew on the scene Thursday, with about 50 people at the crash site and additional personnel at the agency’s headquarters and labs across the country ready to assist.

But first, “we allow the responders to do their important safety mission, which in this case was search and rescue and recovery,” she said. “We stand back to allow them to do their important safety mission.”

Homendy emphasized the NTSB will “leave no stone unturned in this investigation” and that it will be a “whole-of-government effort.”

CNN’s Ray Sanchez, Chelsea Bailey, Gabe Cohen, Emma Tucker, Rashard Rose, Elise Hammond and Zoe Sottile contributed to this report.

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