Sunday Times 2
High stress in high heels
Stories have begun to emerge revealing the astounding bravery in the aftermath of the deadly Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crash.
Asiana Airlines flight attendants (AFP)
Passengers have recounted how female flight attendants carried people on their backs from the wreckage just moments before flames engulfed the plane, while a police officer wearing no protective gear raced into the burning jet to pull out passengers and free others from their seats.
The stories of amazing courage emerged two days after the flight crash landed at San Francisco Airport, killing two Chinese schoolgirls and injuring 182 other passengers. Newly-released images taken moments after show people scrambling for safety from the smouldering wreckage.
One passenger, Eugene Anthony Rah, recalled how Asiana Airlines air hostess Kim Ji-yeon stood out to him as she was only slight but ‘carrying people piggyback’ from the plane if they were unable to walk.
Rah, who captured the dramatic images of smoke billowing from the plane minutes after it skidded to a standstill, said the flight attendant was sobbing as she helped clear the plane minutes before flames took over. He said he noted down her name because ‘she was a hero’.
As flight attendants huddled with the passengers on the tarmac and were treated by medical staff, first responders – 24 firefighters from airport, 110 from San Francisco, 84 from San Matteo County and around 50 police officers – swarmed the scene.
Police officer Jim Cunningham was commended by his fellow first responders for showing ‘an unbelievable presence of mind’ amid the extreme situation.
Cunningham said he took leads from the firefighters and helped them put victims onto backboards to be carried from the rear of the plane. As he powered on, smoke swirled around him.
‘I started coughing,’ he said. ‘We saw a plume of smoke coming at us. It was like something out of a nightmare… I didn’t think about it. I just knew those people were in there. I thought I was a tough guy and just held my breath.’
Fireball: A total of 307 people were on board the plane when it crash-landed. Most managed to walk away from the crash (Reuters)
‘In other stories of heroism, cabin manager Lee Yoon-hye explained that the emergency slides initially caught two crew members beneath them when they were set off. Other crew members deflated the slides with axes to rescue their colleagues, one of whom seemed to be choking beneath the weight.
She described how one flight attendant put a scared elementary schoolboy on her back and slid down a slide, while a pilot helped another injured flight attendant off the plane after the passengers escaped.
Lee, 40, who has nearly 20 years’ experience with Asiana, worked to put out fires and usher passengers to safety despite a broken tailbone. She said she didn’t know how badly she was hurt until a doctor at a San Francisco hospital later treated her.
‘Right before touchdown, I felt like the plane was trying to take off,’ she said at a press conference. ‘I was thinking, “What’s happening?” and then I felt a bang. That bang felt harder than a normal landing. It was a very big shock.
‘Afterward, there was another shock and the plane swayed to the right and to the left. I wasn’t really thinking, but my body started carrying out the steps needed for an evacuation. I was only thinking about rescuing the next passenger.’
She said that when she saw the plane burning after the crash, she stayed calm and ‘didn’t have time to feel that this fire was going to hurt me’.
San Francisco fire chief, Joanne Hayes-White, praised Lee, whom she talked to just after the evacuation. ‘She was so composed I thought she had come from the terminal,’ Hayes-White told reporters. ‘She wanted to make sure that everyone was off…. She was a hero.’
© Daily Mail, London
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