Smoke rises from the wreackage of a UPS MD-11 cargo jet after it crashed on departure from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. November 4, 2025. Jeff Faughender/USA Today Network via REUTERS

By David Shepardson, Allison Lampert and Lisa Baertlein

(Reuters) -The death toll has risen to nine in the crash of a UPS cargo plane that erupted into a fireball moments after takeoff in Louisville, Kentucky on Tuesday, city and state officials said Wednesday.

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived on site Wednesday to begin the process of finding out what went wrong when the 34-year-old MD-11 cargo plane caught fire around 5:13 p.m. ET Tuesday and then crashed.

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said nine dead people had been found at the scene of the crash. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said he expected there would be at least one more death. The plane had a crew of three according to UPS and officials said none of the crew survived.

Beshear on Wednesday declared a state of emergency to help with the massive response to the crash site. "It allows us to move resources more quickly," Beshear told reporters.

Several buildings in an industrial area beyond the runway were on fire after the crash, with thick, black smoke seen rising into the evening sky. About 200 firefighters and emergency personnel responded to the massive fire.

Officials said 11 victims were taken to hospitals on Tuesday. A government official told Reuters at least 10 others remain unaccounted for. Beshear said two people remain in critical condition and added it could have been much worse.

"This plane barely missed a restaurant bar. It was very close to a very large Ford plant with hundreds, if not a thousand plus workers," Beshear told CNN. "It was very close to our convention center that’s having a big livestock show that people were arriving for."

The international airport in Louisville reopened to air traffic early on Wednesday, though the runway where the accident happened is expected to remain closed for another 10 days, officials said.

UPS said it halted package sorting operations at its airport facility on Tuesday and then canceled a parcel sorting shift on Wednesday that usually begins in the midmorning.

U.S. aviation safety expert Anthony Brickhouse said on Wednesday he has not seen any evidence of a link between the accident and a 36-day U.S. government shutdown that has strained air traffic control.

Production of the MD-11 plane ended in 2000 and passenger service officially ended in 2014. For cargo operations, there are about 50 MD-11 planes being operated by FedEx and UPS worldwide, with about two other planes of that type still operating.

NTSB investigators will be looking to retrieve the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder that will shed light on the crash. The NTSB scheduled a press conference on Wednesday for 3 p.m.

Brickhouse said investigators are expected to focus on the number one engine which was seen on video to be ignited, and appeared to have separated from the aircraft. "It is designed to fly if you lose one engine, but we need to see the effect of losing that engine on the rest of the aircraft,” Brickhouse said.

The triple-engine plane was fueled for an 8-1/2 hour flight to Honolulu.

It was the first UPS cargo plane to crash since August 2013, when an Airbus aircraft went down on a landing approach to the international airport in Birmingham, Alabama, killing both crew.

(Reporting by David Shepardson and Allison Lampert; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Chizu Nomiyama and David Gregorio)