Firefighting plane crashes near Falls Fire; pilot killed | Oregon / Northwest

A tanker plane that went missing in eastern Oregon while fighting one of the numerous wildfires spreading across several western states has been found and the pilot on board is dead, authorities said Friday.

A Grant County search and rescue team located the plane Friday morning and confirmed the fatality, said Lisa Clark, a Bureau of Land Management public information officer for the Falls Fire. The single-engine tanker, a small and maneuverable aircraft that looks like an agricultural plane, was located Friday morning in steep, wooded terrain after the search was called off at nightfall the previous day, Clark said.

The plane had already dropped its cargo and the pilot had returned to Burns Airport to reload, Clark said.

The body was carried in procession to John Day.

The plane, commissioned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, disappeared on Thursday. The Falls Fire near the town of Seneca on the edge of the Malheur National Forest has expanded to 219 square miles and is 55 percent contained, according to the government website InciWeb.

Thomas Kyle-Milward, spokesman for Northwest Incident Management Team 8, said authorities received a report of a missing plane around 6:50 p.m. Thursday. The pilot was the only person on board.

The cause of the crash was initially unknown.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated as new information becomes available.