Two pilots died Thursday when their tanker planes collided in midair while helping to fight a major fire in southern Nevada, federal officials said.
The United States Office of Land Administration suggested in a statement that the deceased were “contract pilots.” “Recovery operations are currently underway and initial notifications are still being made,” he said.
The sheriff in Lincoln County, where the collision occurred, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday night.
A spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board said none of the planes could land.
The cause of the 12:55 pm incident was not immediately clear, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. There was a pilot on board each single-engine Air Tractor AT8T, the department said.
The Office of Land Administration said the cause was still under investigation.
The planes can drop up to 800 gallons of fire retardant and can maneuver in areas that are harder to reach for larger tankers, the office said.
“We offer our sincere condolences to the families of the two pilots and to all those who work with the BLM Nevada Ely District,” Nevada State Director of the Bureau of Land Management Jon Raby said in a statement.
The planes had been dispatched to help fight the Bishop Fire, a 14,000-acre fire that burns on federal land approximately 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas, according to Nevada Fire Information, a site with state and federal fire data.
The fire started Wednesday, the site said. Its cause was listed as “human”, although no additional details were available. The site said “record and extreme heat” could fuel the fire.
Dennis Romero contributed
