The twin-engine jet carrying six people crashed and caught fire on Monday afternoon close to the Truckee-Tahoe Airport, according to Nevada County authorities.
On Wednesday’s update, four of the passengers and two crew of the aircraft were confirmed dead by Nevada County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Andre Trygg.
The victims have not yet been identified as officials said they need to use DNA evidence to name the persons because of the wildfire. The said process can take up to a few months to be completed.
On Tuesday, a Federal Aviation Administration report said that a couple of passengers along with two other crew were in the Bombardier CL 600 jet.
Officials on the same day announced no person had managed to survive the crash.
“There’s not much intact at the crash site,” Shannan Moon, Nevada County Sheriff, said.
In a Facebook post, the Truckee-Tahoe Airport revealed that the jet, a twin turbojet Challenger 605, was made by Bombardier. It stated that the aircraft had hit “heavily treed terrain” when it was heading to 7, 000-foot Runway 11 to land.
There were people near the same who claimed they saw a fireball and huge smoke close to the Ponderosa Golf Course. Among the witnesses was Michael Kennedy who was at the airport airfield at that time. Kennedy said he observed a massive mushroom cloud as smoke covered the runway.
A video clip from a certain Matt Mehan, meanwhile, showed how a huge blaze blanketed the location of the crash.
According to the flight logs, the 14-seater jet departed from the Couer D’Alene Airport in Idaho and was set to travel towards Thermal in Riverside County before it continued to Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles, The Sacramento Bee reported.
The incident is still under investigation by both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board.
