Bodies of 3 US firefighters retrieved from Australian air crash site

The bodies of three U.S. firefighters who died in a plane crash earlier this week in Australia’s remote bushland while battling a fierce wildfire have been recovered, the police said on Saturday as investigators started probe into the accident.

A spokeswoman for Australia’s New South Wales state police confirmed the recovery to Reuters in an e-mail.

“They have been taken for a post mortem examination to confirm ID,” the spokeswoman said.

Coulson Aviation, the private Canadian firm that employed the trio, named them as U.S. military veterans Captain Ian H. McBeth, 44, of Great Falls, Montana, First Officer Paul Clyde Hudson, 42, of Buckeye, Arizona, and Flight Engineer Rick DeMorgan Jr., 43, of Navarre, Florida.

The crash of the C-130 tanker plane on Thursday added to national grief in Australia over bushfires that have since October killed 33 people and millions of animals as well as charred vast swaths of land.

Focus on Saturday shifted to determining what caused the crash of the plane that went down just after it dumped a large load of retardant on a huge wildfire in a national park in the mountains south of Canberra, the Australian capital.