22 may have died in Athens crash

Press, 9 October 1979, Page 9

22 may have died in Athens crash

NZPA-Reuter Athens Twenty-two people may I less than 20. However, latest; Greek radio reports put the: toll at 22 Firemen reported seeing! several charred bodies in the gutted fuselage of the Swissair DCS that burst into flames on landing at Athens Airport with 142 passengers’ and 12 crew aboard. The crew escaped unhurt, but about 30 passengers on the Peking-bound plane were injured in a scramble to flee the flames. Some jumped and some fell out of the four-engine jet, which came to rest, blazing furiou-ly. in a ditch beside the runway. Officials and rescue teams said they were not sure h 0..many pec ole ha<’ burned to death. Seventeen of the passengers were listed as missing. but until firemen had cut their way into the stillsmouldering plane there was no way of knowing how many of them were dead. The airport chief, Mr Elias Deros. said some of the missing might have sur- i v ved. but were too dazed to report they had escap J| from the burning plane. j At one stage during Sun-1 day night 25 passengers' were unaccounted for. T t later, after more shocked survivors were found, a Swissair spokesman said the death toll would probably be less than 20. Passengers said they | thought the plane skidded of' the wet runway. As it toppled into the ditch, the. fuel tanks ruptured and exploded. But one airport spokesman said an engine of the illfated Swissair flight 316 caught fire as it was landing. The plane was on a scheduled flight from Geneva and Zurich to Peking with stopsj at Athens and Bombay. Most of the passengers

were going to Peking, including about 100 doctors I who were to attend a medical conference in the Chinese capital. One of the passengers, a Greek sailor, Athanassios Koundemts. aged 49. said: “An air hostess tried to open the middle emergency .doors but was unable to do so. We all scrambled for the front door, and many of usl were hurt in the stampede.” I Professor A. J. Zucker-1 man, aged 45, of the London! School of Hygiene and! Tropical Medicine. said.| panic had broken out when I nearly all the passengers] rushed to the front door] Many of them had realised they could not get out be-i cause of the crush of people.] and had tried to return to| the rear door. Unofficial press reports in] Athens said yesterday that! the plane was transporting! radioactive isotopes. The unconfirmed reports] said that experts from the; Dimocritos Nuclear Research; Centre in Athens were examining the plane’s debris for traces of radioactivity. Swissair officials had informed Greek authorities of the radioactive elements on board the plane, the reports said. A Swissair spokesman in Zurich could not confirm the reports. The pilot of the jetliner! has blamed the state of the! runway for the crash. “I could not keep the plane on the runway. It was skidding and would not answer to the brakes,” the pilot,] named as Mr Smats. told re-j porters. “I did what I could. The] whole thing lasted only a few] seconds.” he added. One of the passengers. Dr; Manila Alexander, a director] of the World Health Organi-i sation. said many of the passengers were doctors of dif-i ferent nationalities on a] W.H.O. mission to Peking to] study the state of public! health in China. This mission; would now be postponed. Dr; Alexander, one of the injured! added.