Clearing Terrain News Today

From now. his fear was that no bodies would be retrieved tonight, that hard work would have to start tomorrow. but i wanted to ask your experts, brooke david and les, one eyewitness said he saw the plane flying so low that he figured theres no way it would have time to clear the mountain range. i mean does that tell you anything about what may have happened here? because this was the one eyewitness that was quoted in many of the french media saying he saw the plane, it was so low, he knows the a...

Operation where youre looking for someone. they have a very specific protocol of how to collect the material thats there that then needs to two to the people that understand crashes and can look at it and study it. >> all the while, you then have the challenge of the snow. apparently its unstable. the outlook for tomorrow is not great, and this area is prone to avalanches. >> yes, this is -- looking at the terrain there, its barren of cover, trees, and things like that. if it does snow quite a b...

Im so mindful of these 150 souls on board. you think theyre 44 minutes into this flight think theyre smooth sailing, then this plane goes down for eight minutes before it hits this terrain. in those eight minutes, are those people on board -- are they feeling the descent? are they aware of whats happening? >> theyre aware of whats happening, certainly, as its descending because they know it is descending. this is a very controlled descent. it wasnt like a rapid -- i mean it was fairly rapid, of ...

Very evident -- its hard to tell from the pictures you have now, but its very evident where the initial impact was. its much like a fireman would try to determine the start of a fire to trace things backwards. but this is very very difficult. if you look at this terrain, every one of those grooves, every one of those small valleys or gullies there that traps the debris it also redirects the debris as well. so trying to find remains and trying to find out how to bring those remains back to the fa...

Out, perhaps a fire on board, may have got them to the point where clearing terrain was certainly an issue. >> and to davids point about the flight data recorder that can figure out the what the how, but not the why. they have to find the voices within the cockpit. they have to find that box to figure out why this happened. thank you, all, very much. some of you i know are standing by. much more on coverage of this plane, this tragedy in france. for more information on how you can help -- i know...

Occur takeoff and landing. this is incredibly rare. >> it is and thats a horrific scene. from what i can gather from that video and from some of the data weve got that that airplane impacted that terrain at high speed, which, you know, pure speculation on my part but something occurred that there was -- something occurred in the cockpit that prevented the awareness that this terrain was in their immediate vicinity or they lost awareness, the crew lost awareness of where they were while they were...

This person really walked you through a lot of the new details as far as the recovery mission, how helicopters can land in this region when they can land in this region. tell me what he told you. >> well, its difficult terrain. its very difficult to navigate. you cant drive there. you have to send helicopters with search and rescue officials on board to try to figure out first of all the lay of the land. wheres the wreckage? how far is it strewn? how far is it scattered? he told me that so far -...

Its part of the county sheriffs office. many of the people that help out are volunteers and they train in it. in france its part of the police force. the rescuers that will be working on it are trained for this. so theyre probably situationally aware. they know what theyre looking for. when you see the wreckage of this plane in terrain like this it will -- its very obvious its not something of natural origin and theyll have to pay attention to it. >> special gear special equipment. conrad im sur...