Thursday, June 25, 2009

DISASTER DRAMA

This is the incredibly sombre, sobering forward I discovered today morning in my mail-box :

"Subject: A330: AIR FRANCE CRASH PHOTOS, AMAZED BY GUY'S INSTINCT......2 photos after Collision and before Death....


Feel so sad for all the passengers including the extraordinary photographer, who kept his cool even in his last moments of life and took this photo. Hats off to him !!!

Yesterday the world saw the disappearance of an A330 Air France during a trans-Atlantic flight between Rio and Paris. Very ironic that a day before, I got a mail of the photos taken by a passenger on a flight mins after a mid-air collision, and mins before the crash of the said aircraft : two shots taken inside the plane before it crashed. Unbelievable!

A B737 had a mid air collision with the Embraer Legacy while cruising at 35,000 feet over South America. The Embraer Legacy, though seriously damaged with the winglet ripped off, managed to make a landing at a nearby airstrip in the midst of the Amazon jungle. The crew and passengers of the Embraer Legacy had no idea what they had hit. The B737however crashed, killing all crew and passengers on board.

The two photos attached were apparently taken by one of the passengers in the B737, just after the collision and before the aircraft crashed. The photos were retrieved from the camera's memory stick. You will never get to see photos like this. In the first photo, there is a gaping hole in the fuselage through which you can see the tailplane and vertical fin of the aircraft.



In the second photo, one of the passengers is being sucked out of the gaping hole.


Photos taken inside the GOL B 737 aircraft that was involved in a mid air collision and crashed.....

These photos were found in a digital Casio Z750, amidst the remains in Serra do Cachimbo. Although the camera was destroyed, the Memory Stick was recovered. Investigating the serial number of the camera, the owner was identified as Paulo G. Muller, an actor of a theatre for children in the outskirts of Porto Alegre. It can be imagined that he was standing during the impact with the Embraer Legacy and during the turbulence, he managed to take these photos. Just seconds after the tail loss, the aircraft plunged. So the camera was found near the cockpit. The structural stress probably ripped the engines away, diminishing the falling speed, protecting the electronic equipment but not unfortunately the victims. Paulo Muller leaves behind two daughters, Bruna and Beatriz."

Last words : Sukanta Chaudhuri, one of our most respected professors at JU, once told us when teaching 'Macbeth' : "Disaster is what we think always happens to others. Until it suddenly dawns on us that tomorrow, we may be the others." I just remembered that.

4 comments:

Discovering M said...

guess someone had the presence of mind for clicking away ! brave too i would say.

and lately i have been nervous about flying :-P

chandreyee said...

a very sad event indeed..and very nicely penned by u i must say...

Malini said...

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_photos_gol_737_crash.htm

maybe you should put a disclaimer on your post as well :)

Casuarina said...

@ Everyone :

The very first line states that this is an extract from an email forward I recived. In fact, there are quotation marks or open inverted commas, whatever you choose to call them, both at the beginning and end of the story as well.

I just re-produced this for everyone...thanks for the link, Malini ! :)

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