3 employees of Louisville facility are missing after UPS plane crash that looked like ‘hell’s fury,’ owner says

By Isabel Rosales, Dalia Faheid, CNN

(CNN) — The power had just gone off and the ground was shaking at Grade A Auto Parts when the owner received a panicked video call from his chief financial officer.

On his screen, CEO Sean Garber watched a “huge fireball” engulf the Louisville, Kentucky, auto-part and recycling facility he has owned for decades as his colleague described a blast followed by “a continuation of explosions.”

“It looked like really hell’s fury around her,” Garber recalled, describing seeing his employees screaming and running from the flames.

A UPS cargo plane had just slammed into the facility shortly after taking off from a nearby airport Tuesday, leaving at least 12 people dead and multiple families with missing loved ones, Kentucky officials said. Three of Garber’s employees are among those still unaccounted for.

Three crew members aboard the freight plane are believed to be dead, but most of the victims were those on the ground.

As flames raged and doors melted shut, people jumped from windows and ran, some employees helping shield others from the growing inferno, the owner said.

The collision left behind a fiery trail of destruction and a half-mile-long debris field, devastating multiple small businesses like Grade A Auto Parts, where mangled, blackened remnants of buildings were set in the background of an “apocalyptic” ashy sky with an acrid smell in the air, Kentucky officials said.

Officials are now losing hope there could be more survivors as bodies are pulled from the vast wreckage and the death toll grows.

“We do not expect to find anyone else alive in the area,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon, adding responders are shifting from rescue to recovery mode.

Two victims are still in critical condition and are in intensive care, the University of Louisville Health said Wednesday.

Now, some Louisville residents are mourning those killed as others are enduring an agonizing wait to hear from missing loved ones, including the workers’ families and two men who said they have not heard from a woman believed to have been at Grade A Auto Parts when the crash happened.

‘She’s all I got’

A woman had been dropping off some scrap metal at Grade A Auto Parts after work when the freight plane crashed, her boyfriend Donald Henderson told CNN affiliate WDRB Tuesday night.

“‘I don’t want to go, (you) go ahead,’” Henderson recalled telling her.

Video of the scene shows a mountainous plume of charcoal-colored smoke emanating from buildings that were set ablaze. In another chilling video at the facility, a man yells, “Did everybody make it out?” When another person responds “No,” he screams, “What do you mean no?”

Henderson went to a family assistance center authorities set up at the Louisville police training academy with William Moreland, who shares two children with the missing woman. Both struggled to put how they’re feeling into words.

“She’s all I got, so … I don’t know how this is going to turn out,” Henderson told WDRB.

The two men said officials at the center took their information and promised to “give us the news as it comes in.”

“I had to go – I can’t be in there,” Henderson said about being in the center with other emotional families desperately awaiting word on the whereabouts of their loved ones.

Grade A Auto Parts – one of two small businesses the governor says were directly impacted by the plane – is now trying to access its computer system to help officials identify customers who were at the facility when the crash happened, according to Garber. It’s unclear exactly how many customers were at the facility at the time, but Garber says there are typically between 15 to 30 customers around that time.

“There’s been bodies found. Many of them are not recognizable, and they’re trying to figure that out,” Garber said.

Headcount revealed missing employees

After the plane collapsed into Garber’s business – apparently coming to rest in the heart of the facility – a headcount revealed three employees were unaccounted for, he said.

Two of the missing employees had been in a building where people jumped from windows to escape the flames after the heat melted the doors shut, Garber said. The third person was believed to be in a warehouse next door.

The incoming plane looked like a rapidly approaching fireball to one of the managers, who tackled a colleague to the floor before they found themselves standing in a burning room, Garber said he later learned.

“There were just so many heroes helping each other out,” he said.

An employee dove between two metal bales that surround the facility to quickly carry a customer who had been burned to safety.

“I would have to imagine it is what a war zone looks like,” Garber said.

As he surveilled the damage Wednesday, Garber said he has lost hope that his employees are still alive. “It’s not survivable,” he said.

One of the missing employees had been with the business for about two decades, Garber said. The second had been working there for about five years and the third had been employed there for about four years.

When Garber met with their families at a family assistance center early Wednesday morning, he noticed they were in a state of shock made worse by the uncertainty.

“There still isn’t resolution for them,” he said.

Now, Garber feels both anger and sorrow thinking about the employees and customers whom loved ones are still searching for.

“We make our money by providing a service to our customers. People came in just to do that,” Garber said. “They didn’t get to go home and that’s a problem and that’s heartbreaking.”

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CNN’s Danya Gainor, Amanda Musa, Emma Tucker, Leigh Waldman and Matthew Rehbein contributed to this report.