Ten people died in the crash on Thursday, and authorities are still trying to piece together why the aircraft went down

Just hours after finding 10 people dead in western Alaska from one of the deadliest plane crashes in the state in 25 years, authorities raced to recover their remains and the wreckage of the small commuter plane from unstable sea ice before expected high winds and snow.

“The conditions out there are dynamic, so we’ve got to do it safely in the fastest way we can,” Jim West, chief of the Nome volunteer fire department, said on Friday.