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Firefighters on Saturday completed the rescue of the bodies of the 62 victims of the plane crash that took place on Friday in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, and have already identified the first two, official sources reported.

The rescue work was completed at 18:30 local time (21:30 GMT) on Saturday, almost 30 hours after the Voepass airline plane went into a tailspin in a residential condominium in Vinhedo, a city in the interior of the state of São Paulo (southeast).

“The work of rescuing the bodies, which was the most urgent part, has been completed thanks to the combined efforts of several entities that participated in the tasks,” said the spokesperson for the Fire Department, Lieutenant Olivia Perroni, in a press conference she gave at the site near the tragedy.

The official added that 34 male and 28 female bodies were removed from the rubble, including those of two minors, corresponding to the 62 occupants of the aircraft (58 passengers and 4 crew members) according to the list released by Voepass.

The victims of the accident in Brazil

The lieutenant also said that 50 bodies have already been transferred to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in São Paulo, where 30 have already undergone the respective autopsy and identification work is underway.

According to firefighters, two of the victims, the pilot and co-pilot, have so far been identified through fingerprint tests.

Perroni said that the firefighters had difficulties in rescuing the last bodies, which were in the rear of the aircraft, since this was the part that was most destroyed by the impact and by the fire that broke out after the crash with the ground.

According to the fire department, the bodies in the front section can be identified by fingerprint tests, but those in the back section, which were burned, will need other types of techniques, including genetic comparison.

Fire Capt. Michael Cristo said the bodies were found sitting in the seats they occupied on the plane, and none had been thrown from the aircraft, which could help with identification.

Around 250 firefighters, rescue workers, experts, police officers and investigators are working on the rescue work, which will continue on Sunday with the removal of debris and the gathering of evidence for the investigation.

Airline statement

On Saturday morning, Voepass airline released a statement to include a man on the list of victims who was not initially listed due to check-in validation errors, confirming that there were 62 victims.

In the afternoon, the company issued another statement to clarify that the passenger list included three Venezuelans and one Portuguese woman who used Brazilian documents to board the ship, but who have dual nationality.

The Venezuelan victims were identified as Josgleidys González, her mother, María Parra, and her son, Joslan Pérez, the latter aged 4, who embarked for São Paulo with the intention of returning to their country after four years in Brazil.

Investigating the black boxes

Those responsible for investigating the plane crash that claimed 62 lives on Friday in the state of São Paulo hope that the plane’s black boxes, which have already been recovered, will provide the first clues about the causes of a tragedy for which they still have no hypothesis.

“At this moment, investigators are working on extracting data from the flight recorders (black boxes) to find explanations for what happened,” said the director of the Center for Investigation and Prevention of Air Accidents (Cenipa) of the Brazilian Air Force, Brigadier General Marcelo Moreno, on Saturday.

In an impromptu press conference in Vinhedo, a city in the interior of the state of São Paulo where the accident occurred, the official said that the black boxes were recovered on Friday night and taken to Brasilia, and that they are now in the Cenipa laboratory.

The reasons for the accident in Brazil

“First we will extract the information from the cockpit voice recorder and then from the flight data recorder. We do not yet know how long this work will take,” he said.

The general said it was premature to comment on the different hypotheses that specialists have put forward regarding the cause of the accident, the main one being the possible accumulation of ice on the aircraft’s wings, which would explain its spin.

“At this time we cannot say whether that was decisive or not,” said the officer, who clarified that the aircraft is certified to travel in such conditions and has devices to prevent the formation of ice.

The president of the airline Voepass -owner of the crashed aircraft-, Eduardo Busch, expressed a similar opinion, saying that “everything that is circulating is speculation.”

The pilot did not communicate

In his brief statement, Moreno “reaffirmed” that “so far we have no information that there was a declaration of any type of emergency in flight traffic controls.”

According to the military, the pilot did not contact any control tower to report problems.

At the same press conference, the president of the National Civil Aviation Agency (ANAC), Thiago Pereira, reiterated that both the aircraft and the crew were in regular operating conditions and that all required certificates were up to date.

Brazil / EFE