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Doesn't pass the smell test. If they had time and safety to investigate, which the article says they did, they had time and safety to remove the equipment, and then send in a repair team, with sufficient force to protect the repair team and the aircraft.

this totally passes the smell test. There are many reasons this aircraft could have been unrecoverable. Most likely it's frame was damage beyond safe field repair-ability. The only way to salvage it would have been to dismantle it and haul it out of there. Which was prohibitively risky. There is a big difference what it takes to keep 2 or 5 maintenance and engineering types safe for a couple hours and what it takes to keep several dozen workers and some heavy equipment safe getting it into the area, protecting it for several days or a week or two and then protection to haul everything out of the area.