An ice buildup may have contributed to the crash of a Continental Airlines plane that went down outside of the northern US city of Buffalo, killing 50 people, federal investigators have suggested. Speculation continued to focus on the wintry weather, the ice buildup on the windshield and front edge as investigators sifted through wreckage and searched for bodies on Saturday at scene of the accident that killed 50 people. Some 75 workers began the delicate and gruesome task of recovering remains from the site about six miles (10 km) from the Buffalo airport. Bodies were being taken to the Erie County medical examiner for identification. All 49 people on the plane and one person in the house were killed. Firefighters worked well into Friday to put out a blaze fed by jet fuel and a natural gas leak. Continental Flight 3407, on a flight from Newark in New Jersey to Buffalo, plummeted onto the house in Clarence Center late Thursday. The Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 turboprop plane exploded on impact about five minutes before it was due to land, killing all 49 passengers and crew and one person in the crushed house. A woman and her daughter escaped from the rubble of their home with minor injuries. The victims included Doctor Alison Des Forges, a leading investigator of the 1994 Rwanda genocide. “The crew discussed significant ice buildup - ice on the windshield and leading edges of the wings,” said investigator Steven Chealander of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The clue was yielded by the recordings on the black boxes recovered from the scene. “Significant ice buildup is an aerodynamic impediment. Airplanes are built with wings that are shaped a certain way and ice can change the shape,” he said. Witnesses reported unusual loud noise coming from the plane ahead of the crash. “We heard a very low humming sound, like a buzz. It was something I have never heard before. Then there was dead silence. After that dead silence the whole building shook. At that point, you heard a terrifying boom, like a crash,” resident Jamie Lynn Trujillo told Fox News.
