BERMAN: Breaking overnight, three Americans were killed in a plane crash while they were fighting fires in Australia. CNN's Will Ripley was just in Australia covering these fires. He joins us now with the very latest. This is dangerous, dangerous work, Will.</s>WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is. And this just underscores the fact, John, that this -- you know, these fires, even though they were making a lot of progress when we left the country, now you have an incident like this. Just devastating. We still don't know the names of the three people who were killed. The firefighters actually working for a private American-owned aviation company that was in Australia near Kuma in the snowy mountainous Monaro region. That's just when the plane went down. They have no idea what caused the accident, but it killed all three crew members on board. And, you know, we know that any number of things could have gone wrong, because these missions are just so dangerous. They're flying a C-130, which is, you know, one of -- it's basically the oldest aircraft that Lockheed has been producing. They started producing it in 1956. And dozens of countries around the world use them for civilian purposes. They're used for firefighting, because they can drop thousands of gallons of water on a fire in a matter of seconds, and then they can refuel in as little as 12 minutes. So obviously, they are a crucial tool. But unlike most aircraft, where the pilots kind of put the plane in autopilot, most of this is hand flying. So these people -- it's very difficult, very dangerous. They have to go through a lot of training. And, you know, a lot of things could happen. The plane could break apart in mid-air. If they flew into a large plume of smoke, they could lose visibility and then they could crash. END
3 Americans Killed Fighting Australian Fires.