KAPRUN, Austria - Helicopters hoisted body bags Monday from the site of a cable car inferno while investigators trying to identify the 159 victims collected toothbrushes and razor blades in hopes of finding DNA samples that matched with the bodies.
Forensic experts were hoping minute bits of tissue on combs, toothbrushes and other personal belongings would match samples from the remains of those killed Saturday when a cable car caught fire in a mountain tunnel on the opening day of the region's ski season.
The intensity of the fire left the bodies badly charred and even tattoos and scars could no longer be seen, said chief forensic pathologist Edith Tutsch-Bauer.
''Because of the heat that built up in the tunnel and the loss of fluids, identification by external appearance is no longer possible for relatives,'' Tutsch-Bauer said.
Most of the names of those who died had been listed by Monday, mostly by eliminating those not accounted for among those skiing and snowboarding Saturday on the glacier slope.
But experts still needed to identify individual bodies, something Tutsch-Bauer said could take up to four weeks.
Salvage workers initially were able to recover only the bodies of those who had tried to escape from the train uphill, but were felled on the steep steps by toxic smoke rushing through the tunnel.
Franz Lang, chief of Salzburg's criminal police, said large parts of the car had melted, making it difficult to remove many of the bodies.
Among the victims were the cable car attendant and a German passenger in the car going downhill, who apparently were overcome by smoke.
About 110 recovery workers were at the site Monday and planned to keep going around the clock.
Due to the grimness of the scene, however, rescuers were working for only around 1 hours at a time. Medical and psychiatric personnel were providing counseling for those unable to deal with the horrors inside.
Soldiers used a hoist to bring remains out to the helicopters through a tunnel that gives access to the middle of the cable car.
From there, six army helicopters hoisted bags of remains, clattering off toward Salzburg, 50 miles northward where an airport hangar served as a temporary morgue. By evening, 66 bodies had been brought out of the tunnel.
It was believed that the car, with a capacity of 180 people, was full. Although the total number of people aboard was uncertain, authorities said the identities of 159 victims were near certain.
Among them were 92 Austrians, 37 Germans, 10 Japanese, eight Americans, four Slovenes and two Dutch, one person from the Czech Republic and one person from Great Britain. Authorities had no nationalities for the remaining four people.
The missing Americans included a family of four, including two children. Two other members of the U.S. Army, a couple who became engaged last week, also were unaccounted for.
Flags flew at half-staff throughout the German state of Bavaria on Monday, and mourners in Vilseck, the home of 12 the victims, placed flowers and candles on the town hall steps. Another eight victims came from surrounding areas.
''The community feels paralyzed,'' said Vilseck mayor Richard Schlicht.
The Salzburg prosecutor's office launched preliminary investigations into the disaster ahead of possible criminal charges, legal officials said.
Officials said 18 people survived - 12 who saved themselves from the cable car after they broke its window with a ski and six who had been waiting at the top of the tunnel. One was in serious condition, the others were released from the hospital Sunday.
Austrian survivor Gerhard Hanetseder told state radio smoke entered the cabin of the cable car soon after it began its ascent.
''Then panic spread. We tried desperately to get the doors open. The panic got ever worse. In the meantime, the entire cabin was on fire,'' he said. ''By chance, a few of the passengers, using ski boots or ski poles or other implements, tried to smash the Plexiglas windows.
''I saw in the last minute someone jump out and then I tried to grab my daughter, I gave her a push. And then I also somehow got out.''
The disaster was believed to be the worst involving skiers being transported by cable car, with the death toll surpassing the 42 people killed in the Italian ski resort of Cavalese in 1976, when a cable carrying suspended cable cars snapped.
