GIRL SURVIVOR WOULDN'T LET GO OF MY HAND; TRAGEDY ON FLIGHT 801.
Some walked away with hardly a scratch.
But others who survived were robbed of their lives by cruel fate.
They lived through the terrible impact of a jumbo jet smashing into a hill - only to die trapped in the blazing wreckage.
The full horror of Korean Airlines Flight 801 was revealed yesterday as daylight came to the Pacific island of Guam.
Somehow, up to 30 of the 254 passengers and crew survived the appalling destruction.
Though how they did it is nothing short of a miracle.
Weeping survivors told of children trapped in the wreckage screaming for help - until they were silenced by the fiery blasts inside the plane.
The island's governor, Carl Gutierrez, said: "It was eerie. All I could hear as I got close to the scene were the screams from every corner of the darkness.
"We had only a single flashlight and we had to follow the sounds to find them."
Gutierrez pulled out five survivors, including an 11-year-old Japanese girl who was trying to tend a critically-injured flight hostess. The governor added: "You could not just stand there and hear those screams go on and not try to help."
The Japanese girl, Rika Matsuda, suffered only cuts and bruises, but Gutierrez had to go with her to hospital aboard a helicopter. He said: "She just would not let go of my hand.
Rika's father Tatsuo Matsuda phoned her from his home in Japan and said: "She sounded all right." He said he was worried about his wife Shigeko, 44, who urged Rika to leave first.
But Gutierrez said: "The mother died in the flames."
Survivor Hong Hyon-sung, 35, said from his hospital bed: "The plane broke up after hitting the ground tail-first.
"I felt the landing gear lowered a bit early. Then the plane hit something and skidded. I thought at first we were on the runway."
Hong, who escaped with a bruised chest, helped a woman who grabbed his foot as he climbed out of the wreckage.
"We ran away, fearing the plane might explode," he said. Hong told how he returned to the wreckage. "When I shouted, asking whether anybody was alive, children shouted for help.
"I asked them 'How many?'And they said 'Four.' It was frustrating and unfortunate but I could not get back in because fire caused blasts inside the plane."
Hong said that the woman he rescued was badly burned and they had to wait for an hour before being rescued. He was forced to set fire to clothes to attract a rescue helicopter.
Dr Michael Lancer, who lives nearby, raced to the wreckage.
He said: "I saw some people were able to walk away. The plane was in five pieces and it's a miracle that anyone could come out of it.
"Men, women, and children were just lying all over the place."
Most of the survivors were in the front of the jet, in the firstclass section, which was largely
intact. The tail section, brightly marked with the airline's blue and red logo, also remained in one piece.
The Korean Airlines jumbo, which was flying from Seoul to Guam, was attempting a landing at 2 a.m. in darkness and heavy rain when it clipped the top of the hill.
The stricken jet carved a brown swathe through the green hillside before it disintegrated into five sections.
The cruellest moment came seconds after the plane skidded to a halt on the crest of a rocky hill.
It ruptured an oil pipeline on the ground and a fireball engulfed the jumbo.
Agonisingly, the end of Agana airport's runway was in plain view less than three miles away.
By dawn, some 200 rescuers and medical personnel were at the crash site with another 300 personnel supporting the operation from other locations.
But the rescuers were severely hampered by thick mud and six foot high razor-sharp sawgrass.
There was no equipment to break into crushed sections to reach trapped survivors.
Only four-wheel drive vehicles could get close.
Navy crews had to be brought in to bulldoze a road to the wreckage.
It took four hours for the first survivor to reach a hospital which was less than a mile away.
U.S. Navy helicopters were sent to the site, their pilots using night vision goggles to try to spot survivors on the steep hillside. They ferried 30 people still alive, some badly burned, to hospitals.
But three of them later died.
The exact number of survivors was still unclear last night.
Korean Airlines said there were 28. Other unconfirmed reports put the number between 27 and 30.
The pilot and co-pilot were missing and presumed dead.
Rescuers gave up hope of finding anyone else alive last night.
Speaking amid the charred and still smouldering wreckage, U.S. Admiral Martin Janczak said: "We have search and rescue dogs available to us, but it's our opinion that no one is still alive." He said 69 bodies had been recovered and 155 people were missing.
Flight 801 was carrying 231 passengers and 23 crew, including several South Korean politicians, three infants and at least 14 Americans. Five unidentified foreign passengers were on board.
Many of the passengers were families and honeymooners heading for Guam's tropical beaches.
The voice and flight-data recorders have been sent to Washington for analysis.
It was the third major crash involving the airline.
In 1983, 269 people were killed when KAL Flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet fighter after straying into Soviet air space.
In 1987, a KAL flight disappeared near Burma with 115 people on board. A few days later, a North Korean agent was arrested and confessed that she had planted a time-bomb on the plane.
AGONY
Weeping families break down as they wait to hear the casualty lists in Seoul
WRECK
A gaping hole leads into the first class section while smoke pours from the rest of the shattered jumbo jet
RESCUE
Firemen pull another passenger from the wreckage, working frantically as screams fill the air
BODIES
Bodies of the victims are covered up and laid out on the ground beside the pipeline
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| Author: | Foreign, MARK DOWDNEY |
|---|---|
| Publication: | The Mirror (London, England) |
| Date: | Aug 7, 1997 |
| Words: | 1017 |
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