they were joining the international relief effort and on their way back from one of those missions when they lost contact on tuesday. and the sad confirmation coming from the u.s. joint task force that this was indeed the wreckage of a u.s. helicopter. but they still don t know the location of the other five people who were on board. we re continuing to check and we ll let you know what we find out here. back to you. all right, will tough to hear but we have to know. let s keep talking about who these u.s. marines were on this missing helicopter. we re going to go to cnn pentagon correspondent barbara starr. barbara, what do we know sf. good morning, chris. this marine corps unit came originally from camp pendleton in san diego. they had deploy today japan for a six-month tour. when the earthquakes happened they were sent onto nepal to be part of the relief effort. our understanding from the pentagon is the marines had been delivering rice and tarps to some of those hard hit villag
chris, it s not functioning because they don t have the technology in place. i know. i m not saying why it s not functioning, i m saying it s not functioning and if it were this would be avoided. why won t you accept that? chris, this has nothing to do with money. i never said it did. i m trying to get past the politics of it. you kept referring to the speaker s statement. because he said it s a stupid question. and you won t say whether or not it s a stupid question because you want to talk about money and that s the politics not the practicality. chris, i don t want to talk about money. i want to talk about reforming amtrak. we have produced a bill in the house, significant reforms, let s reform amtrak and then let s start talking about money. if there needs more. are they going to be able to spend it wisely. i m not making this a money issue. it sounds like you re making it a money issue. i never even said the word money but i understand why it s on your mind because
details. will. reporter: chris, we re learning that the weather conditions are getting increasingly treacherous at this crash site about 21 miles east of the katmandu airport where i am right now, this is the command center where search crews have been taking off for the past several days. and now those crews have been focusing in on this area. a very steep mountainside very difficult rugged terrain where the conditions have gotten so bad they may not be able to fly a helicopter in to recover the three bodies that have been found so far near the wreckage of this helicopter. i flew over this area yesterday and i can tell you not only is the terrain difficult but the extent of the devastation in this area is overwhelming. and what these marines and the two nepali soldiers were doing is they were delivering humanitarian aid to people in some of these hard hit villages that are isolated and cut off right now because landslides have covered the roads and made them impassable. helicopters
that s why this happened. don t make it about somebody else. what do you say? well because it s never that simple chris. the fact of the matter is that human error does occur. and we may find that there is a human component to this but we ought to understand that smart infrastructure investment does a lot of things. first and foremost it helps to guard against and to control against human error. we re learning that as we talk about the train controls the safety mechanisms that could be in place that should be in place. but beyond that good infrastructure investment keeps you up to speed on maintenance and all the other steps you need to take to ensure frankly if you have too sharp a turn maybe you address that. maybe you begin to invest in that area to make sure that the tracks are not so sharp so you can deal with those challenges. the problem we have in the united states chris, is that we re not looking forward on
to try to figure out what happened to the other five people onboard who have not yet been located. chris. will thanks for staying on it. we do want to know more about the u.s. marines who were aboard the missing helicopter. here s what we understand at this point. let s bring in cnn pentagon correspondent barbara starr. what can you tell us? good morning, chris. this was a marine corps unit out of camp pendleton. they had deploy today japan for a six-month tour when the crisis erupted with the earthquakes and had been sent there to help. our understanding from the pentagon when they went down they were on a relief mission delivering tarps and rice to a hard-hit village. and at that point some other villagers came up to them and said wait a minute there s another village that needs help. they got back in their helicopter and they went off to the second village and were trying to get there to help those people as well when this happened. a couple of days ago the father of pilot chris