Hey...you're ALIVE....
Hey...you're ALIVE....
I don't know, but I think given the circumstances I would be pretty happy to just be alive....
BITCH BITCH BITCH....
Relief turns to anger for some passengers in Air France disaster in Toronto
MARIA BABBAGE
Wed Aug 3, 6:38 PM ET
TORONTO (CP) - Relief at their narrow escape from death gave way to frustration for some passengers of Air France Flight 358 on Wednesday as they fumed about their treatment by officials in the minutes and hours following the harrowing plane crash.
Those who were aboard the ill-fated aircraft, which skidded off a rain-soaked runway during a vicious thunderstorm Tuesday before crashing in flames in a wooded ravine, continued to tell stories of heroism and survival.
But there were also some who couldn't contain their frustration about the way they and their families were treated after the dramatic accident, which sent only 43 of the 309 people on board to hospital, all with minor injuries.
French resident Martine Chrocca, who injured her back during the crash, said she waited for more than an hour for help, gathered under a nearby highway overpass with a group of nearly 40 other passengers to seek shelter from the torrential downpour.
Chrocca, who managed to recover her travel documents inside a carry-on bag, complained that she got little help from the flight crew as she tried to get out of the plane and suggested they were more concerned about the fate of the jetliner.
"It's strange that they are more interested in the plane outside - everybody is talking about the plane outside - than about the passengers, where they are," Chrocca said.
Maria Cojocaru, a resident of the north Toronto suburb of North York, was travelling from Paris with her two children, a seven-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy, after visiting family in Romania.
Cojocaru said she and her two children, one of whom was sick to her stomach during their wait, spent more than an hour :scared sitting soaking wet inside the airport terminal before anyone was able to offer any assistance.
She expressed frustration that airport officials took so long to get basic provisions such as blankets and water to the passengers once the immediate danger had passed.
"I have only one thing to tell them: I think it's not fair," Cojocaru said. "I thought they would try, you know, to comfort us."
Cojocaru was quick to note she bore no anger towards the crew of Flight 358, whom she credited with saving the lives of countless people aboard the aircraft in the terrifying moments immediately following the crash, as fire erupted in the engines and smoke began filling the cabin.
"All the time they speak to us and tell us, 'Move, move, move,' " she said. "At the end, they saved our lives."
But Veronica Laudes, Toronto resident who was in Paris on business, said she wasn't impressed with Air France the day after the crash.
The airline called her around 4 p.m. Wednesday to offer a reimbursement of up to $300 to replace any lost items, said Laudes, who lost her cellphone, laptop and business clothes in the crash.
"What am I going to do with $300? My phone cost me $250. That is not helping me."
Brian Lackey, vice-president of operations for the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, defended the way his agency handled the emergency.
"It's always difficult in a situation where you're partially off the airport to make sure that you do have all the passengers, and we immediately deployed buses to the area of the crash, to the area where the aircraft came to rest," Lackey said.
Some friends and family members who were on hand to meet the flight were forced to wait a long time before learning whether their loved ones had survived, and "three or four hours" before they could be reunited, :scared he conceded.
"It is always difficult to get information on specific individuals to specific meeters and greeters in these situations," Lackey said.
"Meeters and greeters obviously were concerned for some time because we didn't have full information on who was off (the plane)."
Don Enns, senior investigator with the Transportation Safety Board, said investigators will examine the wreckage to determine, among other things, why some of the emergency chutes apparently didn't deploy.
"Part of (the investigation) is to determine why the accident happened, the other part is what are the issues which would affect survivability and ease of egress," Enns said.
"If there are problems with the chutes, we'll be looking into that, we'll be identifying it and if there's identifiable issues we'll be making recommendations."
A number of passengers, most of whom managed to get out of the plane in less than a minute, made their way to nearby Highway 401, Canada's busiest thoroughfare, in hopes of flagging down passing motorists for help.
Guy Ledez, 37, was driving along nearby Corvair Road when he saw what he's "99 per cent sure" was lightning hitting the plane before it erupted in flames.
"I saw all the lightning all of a sudden hit it, then I saw some smoke and then . . .I was all, 'Oh, it hit the plane, oh my God,"' said Ledez, who scrambled over a downed chain-link fence topped with barbed wire and entered the burning plane to look for survivors.
Passengers were frantically trying to climb up a muddy embankment to get away from the burning wreckage for fear it was about to explode, Ledez said.
It was like "a sea of people down there trying to get up the gully," he recalled.
"It was an image that kept flashing (in my mind), along with the smoke in the plane, going through the plane with all the smoke. It's just a hard image to forget."
