The New York Times, March 8, 2007
Survivors Describe Horror of Plane Crash in Indonesia
By SETH MYDANS
JAKARTA, Indonesia, March 7 — A television cameraman leaped from a burning
aircraft on Wednesday and filmed his fellow survivors staggering away from the crash
as bright orange flames and columns of black smoke poured from the broken
fuselage.
[PHOTO: Getty Images. Indonesian officials surrounded the remains of a Garuda
Airlines jet in Yogyakarta Wednesday. Most of the passengers escaped the burning
plane.]
Survivors said the plane shuddered before landing, hit the ground with a hard jolt and
slid off the end of the runway into a rice field, filling with smoke and darkness before
erupting in flames and explosions.
It was the latest of several transportation disasters in Indonesia. The passenger
airliner slammed into the ground on landing, killing at least 22 people and leaving
many others badly injured.
The cause of the accident was unclear. By various accounts, the aircraft landed at
high speed and might have had trouble with its landing gear. An earlier report from an
Indonesian official said that 49 of the 140 people on board had been killed in the
crash.
The videotape, shown on television here, showed dazed passengers wandering though
the green fields or lying on the ground. Some helped fellow passengers stagger from
the wreckage; others bent over the injured.
Explosions sounded like rifle shots from the wreckage. People wailed and cried for
help; there were sirens and whistles and shouting. A man could be heard speaking
into a cellphone, "Yes, yes, I'm here, I survived."
The images were accompanied by the sound of panting and sighing, apparently by the
cameraman, Wyan Sukarta, who worked for the Australian Channel 7 news station,
as he filmed his fellow passengers.
"Following the evacuation process, we found that 112 passengers survived while 21
passengers died," the national airline, Garuda, said in a statement. "From the crew,
six people survived and one cabin crew member died."
Among the passengers on the Boeing 737-400 were several Australian officials and
journalists who were covering a visit to Indonesia by Foreign Minister Alexander
Downer, who flew to Yogyakarta on an Australian government aircraft.
Indonesian television listed nine foreigners as victims in the crash.
Passengers described chaotic scenes as people shoved their way through emergency
exits.
"I was sleeping and then the plane slammed twice and I heard people screaming,"
said Din Syamsuddin, the chairman of the Indonesian Islamic movement
Muhammadiyah. "It was dark and there was smoke everywhere. I saw many
passengers hurt."
Speaking to the Elshinta radio station, he said: "Suddenly there was smoke inside
the fuselage, it hit the runway and then it landed in a rice field. I saw a foreigner. His
clothes were on fire and I jumped from the emergency exit."
He said some passengers were trying to get their hand luggage. "I cried to them, 'Get
out, get out,' " he said. "I was sitting not far from the emergency door. I felt someone
guide me to the right. There were many people inside the plane when I got out."
The air force commander at the airport in Yogyakarta, First Air Marshal Benyamin
Dandel, told the Detikcom news Web site, "The plane was too fast or overspeeding,
so it ran about 300 meters off the runway."
Hadi Kismono, an aeronautical lecturer at the Bandung Institute of Technology, said
the most probable cause of the accident was a failure of the landing gear.
"This caused the plane body to have a direct contact with the runway, which caused
the broken wing," he said. "It is suspected that the pilot did a hard landing."
Indonesia has suffered a number of transportation disasters in recent months, along
with continuing natural disasters that include earthquakes, floods and landslides; the
number of lives lost runs into the thousands.
The crash came one day after two strong earthquakes hit the neighboring island of
Sumatra, destroying hundreds of buildings near the city of Padang and killing at least
52 people, according to The Associated Press, which cited a government official.
In late December, a passenger plane operated by the budget airline Adam Air crashed
into the ocean, killing all 102 people aboard. Days before that, a passenger ferry sank
in a storm in the Java Sea, killing more than 400 people. More recently, a ship sank in
the port of Jakarta, leaving at least 50 people dead.
Ruth Meigi Panggabean, a passenger on Wednesday's flight who works for the aid
group World Vision, said passengers had been warned that the trip would be bumpy.
"As we approached the ground and I could see roofs from our window, the plane was
still swaying and shaking," she said. "Then the plane was slammed to the ground and
skidded forward and slammed once again before it came to a stop."
Copyright © 2007 The New York Times Company.
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