As the sun set and businesses started to close in Louisville, Kentucky, on Tuesday, the evening calm was suddenly shattered by a giant explosion near the city’s airport.

The grim task of finding victims from the firestorm that followed the crash of a UPS cargo plane in Louisville, Kentucky, entered a third day Thursday as investigators gather information to determine why the aircraft caught fire and lost an engine on takeoff.

The MD-11 that exploded spent much of September and October at ST Engineering at San Antonio International Airport. The company maintains the carrier's fleet.

A UPS MD-11 plane crashed shortly after take-off near the Louisville, Kentucky, airport, according to preliminary information, a source says.

Video from a business just 500 feet away captured the fiery destruction when a UPS plane crashed after takeoff in Louisville, Kentucky.

LOCATION AND SCALEThe Worldport facility in Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport spans about 5.2 million square feet, or roughly 90 football fields and serves as the global air logistics nerve center for UPS. Handles around 2 million packages per day. The automated sorting system can process up to 420,000 packages/letters per hour.

A UPS cargo flight 2976 crashed around 5:15 ET after it took off from Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, Kentucky, en route to Honolulu, Secretary of the US Department of Transportation Sean Duffy said. The aircraft was a McDonnell Douglas MD-11.

The crash near the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport marked the deadliest accident in UPS Airlines history.