Firefighting pilot killed in tanker plane crash in Oregon

A tanker plane that disappeared in eastern Oregon while fighting one of the many 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 aircraft Friday morning and confirmed the death, said Lisa Clark, a Bureau of Land Management information officer for the Falls Fire. Clark said that the single-engine tanker, a small and nimble plane that looks like a crop duster, was located in steep, forested terrain on Friday morning after the search was suspended at nightfall the day before.

The plane contracted by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management went missing Thursday. The Falls Fire, near the town of Seneca on the edge of the Malheur National Forest, has grown to 219 square miles and is 55% contained, the government website InciWeb shows.