Germanwings plane crash: Search underway for second 'black box

 

• 12:51 p.m. ET: The two Americans killed in the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 have been identified as Yvonne Selke and her daughter Emily Selke of Nokesville, Virginia. Raymond Selke told The Washington Post that his wife and daughter were among those killed. The Drexel University sorority of Emily Selke posted a statement on Facebook mourning her loss.

• 12:34 p.m.: The debris at the crash site is not characteristic of a plane that exploded in flight; it suggests the plane hit the ground and broke apart, said Remi Jouty, the head of BEA, the French aviation investigative arm that is leading the crash probe.

• 12:29 p.m.: Some investigators were dropped Wednesday morning by helicopter onto the rugged, remote crash site, Jouty said.

Radar followed the plane "virtually to the point of impact" in the Alps in southern France, Jouty said. The flight's last altitude recorded by radar was just over 6,000 feet.

Investigators have managed to hear some audio from the cockpit voice recorder, one of two so-called "black boxes" on the flight. The other "black box," the flight data recorder, has not yet been found, Jouty said.

Earlier, French President Francois Hollande said the outside frame of the second "black box" has been found, though not the recorder itself.

• Noon: "We owe it" to the families of the victims, and to the countries affected, to determine what happened, Hollande said. "Dear Angela, Mariano, you can rest assured that ... everything will be discovered" and light thrown upon the circumstances of the disaster, Hollande said in Seyne-les-Alpes, addressing German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who were standing beside him.

• 11:53 a.m.: Hollande said he, Merkel and Rajoy are in Seyne-les-Alpes "in order to bow before the memory of those victims" of the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525. He said the French people are at the sides of those mourning the crash. More than 15 countries had citizens aboard the aircraft, he said.

• 11:02 a.m.: A French aviation official says investigators are working now to open the plane's cockpit voice recorder and could download the data on it within hours.

• 10:15 a.m.: The Marseille prosecutor says investigators have started the process of identifying victims' bodies but that their efforts will take time to complete.

• 9:20 a.m.: Merkel, Hollande and Rajoy have arrived near the crash site in the French Alps.

• 7:50 a.m.: Two Americans were among those on board the doomed Germanwings flight, the airline's CEO says.

• 7:04 a.m.: Ulrich Wessel, the head teacher at a German school that lost 16 students and two teachers on the Germanwings flight, says the crash has left him "almost speechless" and that the loss is "inconceivable."

Full story:

A day after Germanwings Flight 9525 slammed into a remote corner of the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board, the cause of the crash remains a mystery.

Investigators braved treacherous terrain to scour the scene for a second day as they searched for clues -- and the remains of the 144 passengers and six crew members who lost their lives, schoolchildren and two babies among them.

The discovery of the cockpit voice recorder has raised hopes that experts might be able to access the data within hours.

But conditions for recovery efforts were not ideal, with wind and low cloud in the area. Even without inclement weather, crews face an array of challenges: Near vertical mountain slopes. Tiny pieces of debris. Human remains strewn for hundreds of meters along a deep ravine.

The site is also far from accessible. The plane crashed in an area known as the Massif des Trois-Eveches, near Digne-les-Bains, where mountain peaks soar almost as high as 3,000 meters (1.9 miles).

Helicopters took off Wednesday from Seyne-les-Alpes, the staging ground for search efforts. Officials say they need to fly copters to the crash site to allow teams to conduct search and recovery efforts. Some workers are being winched down to inaccessible spots, while others are using crampons to keep a grip on the frozen ground.

Merkel, Hollande and Rajoy arrived Wednesday afternoon at Seyne-les-Alpes to meet with rescue workers and thank them for their efforts.

The Marseille prosecutor, Brice Robin, said investigators were starting the grim task of identifying the bodies.

"I would like to stress that it will take several days," he said. "I am not even speaking of DNA comparisons, that will be carried out afterward and will take weeks. So I want to say right away that we are facing a lengthy investigation. We won't have the results immediately."

Perhaps the only task as challenging as recovering the bodies is figuring out why the plane went down.

Germanwings employees held a moment of silence in Cologne, Germany, on Wednesday morning to mark the moment of the crash. A "small" number of flights were canceled due to reluctance among some crew members to fly, the airline said in a s