Jet-crash toll may be 100

Press, 15 October 1976, Page 5

Jet-crash toll may be 100

X T ZPA Santa Cruz

A cargo jet bound for the Lnited States has ploughed into the main avenue of the eastern Bolivian city of Santa Cruz, and the death toll is expected to be up to 100.

It cut a path of destruction for more than 300 yards, smashed a school, and slewed across a field where boys were playing soccer. “I just can’t say how many died or who they were,” a witness said. “I can only say that I saw burned bodies all over the crash area as well as horribly mutilated corpses.”

The District Governor's office said at least 65 people w'ere known to have been killed in the crash on Wednesday, local time. Rescue officials said they expected the toll to mount because many people had been very badly injured. The estimate of about 100 dead was made by the United States Embassy in La Paz. the Bolivian capital 350 miles to the north-west. Witnesses said the fourengine jet — a cargo-model Boeing 707 belonging to a Miami, Florida, firm, carrying a crew of three Americans — faltered shortly after take-off from El Trompillo Airport on the edge of the city. It clipped the tops from large trees 200 yards from the end of the runway and ploughed into a residential! area.

“People on the scene said they heard an explosion before the plane fell, and saw fire in one of the motors on the left wing,” said an Air Force officer. Captain Hugo Franco, Air Force commander for the Santa Cruz district, said the schoolchildren had gone home for lunch and none had been inside when the plane smashed a corner of the building. But the caretaker and his family had been in the school and all five all been killed, Captain Franco said. Witnesses had said earlier that they thought about 60 children had been in the school when the plane’s wing had smashed through it.

The jet’s wings sliced off trees and power poles as it hurtled diagonally across the Avenida de Ejercito. The aircraft then crashed through a line of people waiting to buy kerosene for their cooking stoves from a street vendor. Officials said at least 30 of them were killed.

The blazing wreck crashed through a wall and slid across a practice field outside the local soccer stadium where two boys teams were playing.

The tail section came to rest against the wall of the municipal swimming pool near the stadium. The burning fuselage smashed into the stone stadium wall, setting fire to a locker room.

Officials >«id eight youths in the locker room died from smoke inhalation ano asphyxiation. The football field w«strewn with wreckage and the bodies of the dead and injured.

"All those people were destroyed, burned, mutilated,” an Air Force officer said. “It was like a scene from Dante. There were screams from the burned people.” General Hugo Banzer, President of Bolivia’s military Government, has flown to Santa Cruz from la Paz with emergency medical supplies and Government officials.

Bolivian aeronautics officials ordered an immediate investigation into the cause of the crash, described as the worst aviation disaster in Bolivian history.