Plane crashes into hills killing 120

Press, 23 October 1989, Page 8

Plane crashes into hills killing 120

NZPA-Reuter Tegucigalpa A Boeing 727 crashed in the hills surrounding the Honduran capital on Saturday and burst into flames, killing at least 120 people. Officials said 16 people survived the crash, among them Hondurans, North Americans, Australians, Spaniards and a Paraguayan. A Perth couple were among the few survivors of the plane crash. According to passenger lists released in Honduras, Ronald and Helen Deverou have minor injuries from the crash but are in good condition, an Australian

foreign affairs department spokesman said. Mr Deverou broke an ankle getting out of the aircraft and had surgery yesterday, the spokesman said. Mrs Deverou had unspecified minor injuries but was not hospitalised. The Honduran plane en route from San Jose, Costa Rica to Tegucigalpa, via Managua, Nicaragua, crashed in driving winds and low cloud on the top of a hill south east of Tegucigalpa. An official of the Honduran airline Tan Sahsa said among the passengers were citizens of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, the United States. France, Spain,

the Soviet Union, Bolivia, Britain, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Sweden, the Netherlands, Chile and Argentina. Fire department spokesman Francisco Medina said all the corpses had been extracted from the wreckage by 5.00 p.m. and flown by helicopter to a morgue for identification. He said fires that had raged among the wreckage all day had finally been put out. Most of the people died from the searing heat inside the fusilage, and only the few who could escape before the jet burst into flames survived, Mr Medina said. “There was maybe five or 10 minutes before the plane caught

fire, which gave some people the opportunity to get out,” he said.

“It’s the worst air accident that we’ve had in this country at least in the last 20 years,” he added. Mr Medina said the tragedy was amplified because the plane partially broke up on hitting the top of the hill near the village of Las Mesitas. Firemen were not at the scene until 40 minutes after the accident because of the remoteness of the site, unconnected by telephone lines or main roads, Mr Medina said. Honduran airforce officials were investigating the plane’s flight recorder to establish the cause of the crash, he said.