Air crash ‘like a small atom bomb’

Press, 24 October 1989, Page 8

Air crash ‘like a small atom bomb’

NZPA-Reuter Tegucigalpa A woman who survived the fiery crash:of a Honduran jet* liner that killed at least 130 people described yesterday the harrowing moments after impact as “like a small atom bomb.” Officials from the Tan Sahsa airline said only 15 of: 146 passengers and crew managed to scramble to safety after the Sunday crash. ; ;

“It was like a small 4 . atom bomb, flames shooting sideways. People trapped inside screamed for quite some minutes before the noise died down,” Helen Devereux, aged 47, an Australian, said from her hospital bed. She was flying with her husband, Ronald, on flight 414 from

Costa Rica, via Managua, to Honduras when the plane crashed atop a rocky, cloudcovered hill on the approach to Toncontin airport “As soon as we entered the cloud, there was a bump. Seats were thrown up, garbage was flying, luggage came falling out the racks,” Mr Devereux, aged 50, said. “The plane just disintegrated into a smouldering metal wreckage, a mess of hot wires and broken seats, junk everywhere, and little fires starting up all around us,” he said. Red Cross officials said they have extracted 132 corpses from the wreckage, but the exact death toll has been complicated

because most of the victims are so badly burnt that identification is difficult. The Honduran Labour Minister, Armando Blanco, was among the dead. Mr Devereux said he clawed desperately at a small hole in the steel of the fuselage above his head so that he could flee the burning hull. He managed to squeeze out on to the roof and then helped free his wife, who he said had snapped out of unconsciousness when she felt flames burning her feet. “When it’s a choice of burning alive, you could squeeze your way out of a tin can,” Mr Devereux said.

Other. survivors said staying alive was pure luck or God’s will.

Hernan Madrid, aged 40, said if he had not been sitting near a part of the fuselage that cracked open, he would never have scrambled to safety. “I’m alive because God saved me,” the Honduran university lecturer said. “All the other people around me were crushed beneath steel, couldn’t get out, and burnt” Survivors denied witnesses reports that the Boeing 727 had suffered engine failure. The family of a Tan Sahsa stewardness, Nivea Margot, said she had been announcing the plane’s imminent arrival at Tegucigalpa’s Toncontin airport at the moment of the crash. Other survivors said the announcement was the last thing

that they remembered hearing before the plane struck the ground. Air transport and Boeing officials would help Honduran air authorities investigate the cause of the crash, described as the worst in Honduras air history. Tan Sahsa officials said the plane fell intact, but they have not specified the possible causes of the crash. The survivors flagged down a bus to carry them from the hilltop to hospital. “The pilots, air hostesses, and others all crowded on a public bus until we were met by relief vehicles,” Mr Devereux said. “You’ll take any port in a storm.”