Air Disasters: Dramatic black box flight recordings. Malcolm MacPherson

her arm and pulled her. I mean, it wasn’t like Shelly. I literally [had] dragged Shelly on the ground, but I’m sure I just grabbed [this woman with the baby]. She was yelling, ‘Help me! Help me!’ when she was in the aeroplane.

      There was a small shed in the back yard [behind the house carport, which the piece of aircraft fuselage had struck] and I just took them back there to safety.

      I went back to the aeroplane again, and I remember thinking how hot it was—I mean, I placed my arm on the engine [cowling] and it just burned all the skin off my—not the skin but it severely burned my arm and just the heat of it, the heat of the metal, and I remember hearing explosions, small explosions, and I thought, ‘Well, I have to do what I have to do, but I can’t stay here forever.’ I was concerned that I would succumb to the smoke or, you know, the fire or something like that.

      But anyway, I did go back, and I continued to yell, ‘Release seat belts and get out!’ and another woman appeared at the same opening…She was yelling, ‘I don’t want to die! Help me! I don’t want to die! I can’t find my baby!’

      I later learned that she was one of the women who had a child, a lap child, with her. [Of the two lap children on the flight, only one survived.] I helped her out of the aeroplane and she had some injuries, I think, because she was basically immobile. It took a lot to get her out. The tail of the aeroplane was on the ground but the centre section was in the air. It was at quite an angle. So the opening was probably…mid-waist to chest-high.

      I had to reach up just a little. She’s yelling, ‘I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! Help me out! I can’t find my baby! I can’t find my baby!’ I literally had to just bearhug her and pull her out because she was heavy. Anyway, I got her out and got her back to the same place I took the others at the back of the yard.

      You know, she was yelling, ‘I can’t find my baby!’ and I went back then, but at that point I didn’t think it was probably…[the] best thing to do. What I’m saying is, I didn’t think it was appropriate that I was actually going into the aeroplane and search[ing], because of the fire and the smoke and how long it took them to get out.

      But I [started] back again after helping the lady out and [I saw a man and a woman] from the neighbourhood. I asked them just to stay with the passengers [in the back yard] and I went back to the aeroplane and continued to yell…There was nobody. And at that point, well…I thought, ‘I need to get away because it’s very hot and I don’t want to survive the impact to die in the fire of the secondary explosions.’ Something like that. And I thought I could be of help somewhere else, possibly.

      And one of the things that bothered me, too, is that I did have jet fuel on me. My clothing was flammable and probably more so with jet fuel on me. So I went back around the back side of the house, towards the front yard, and I saw the captain, and at that point Fire and Rescue still hadn’t arrived. I remember hearing the captain say, ‘She’s okay! She’s okay!’ I thought he was talking about Shelly but in reality he was talking about Karen [Forcht, the third flight attendant on the aeroplane], and then I did see Karen, and she had severe burns. She had lost her shoes in the impact and she had severe burns on her arms, hands, face, legs. I believe three people had followed Karen out when she got out.

       FEMALE PASSENGER, AGED FORTY-FOUR, SEAT 19-D

      We pulled the door open a little, and flames were visible. The flight attendant said, ‘No. No.’ And we shut the door immediately. Then the flight attendant turned around and said, ‘We can’t get out this way.’ And we went the other way.

      By the time I refocused and turned around there was nobody else there. I saw the [same] black man and a small black child wiggling out of a place where there was light at the tail end of the aeroplane. I had previously seen this area of light when I went to help with the door, but I ignored it because I had seen flames as well as light. [Just as Flight Attendant DeMary had trouble believing that the aeroplane had come to a halt in a neighbourhood with trees and houses, this passenger was equally baffled, and reasonably so, when she looked down before stepping out of the wreckage and saw a household’s kitchen in front of her.] I came back to where my seat was, and I noticed that to the left there was a door going into the kitchen [of the house that the aircraft had collided with]. I was confused.

      I asked myself, ‘Why is this kitchen here?’ I tried to open the kitchen door, thinking that I could get out through the kitchen. The door was like a storm door with glass on the top and a white bottom. The glass in the door was not broken. I wanted to smash the window, but I could not find anything loose that I could use.

      I decided that I [had to escape] through the area that I had seen the man and his young son wiggling through. Then I heard a man yell, ‘We made it! We made it!’ And I knew I had to go that way.

       FEMALE PASSENGER, AGED TWENTY [WITH A NINE-MONTH-OLD INFANT], SEAT 21-C

      During the crash and the impact of the aeroplane hitting the ground, my baby went flying in front of me. I tried to hold her and I couldn’t. They had told me I could hold her in my lap. I would have paid for her to sit in a seat. They said she did not need a seat. The man said that she did not need a seat because she was under the age of two, and that she was a ‘lap baby’, and I could hold her. I would have given my life for her. She wasn’t here that long. She had just turned nine months old.

       MALE PASSENGER, AGED TWENTY, SEAT 21-D

      I could hear people above me. It sounded like people [were] talking on metal and banging metal around. I heard someone say, ‘Where are you?’ And all I could say was, ‘Here!’ because I did not know where I was. Someone put an air mask on top of my face. I could hear cutting, and when they used the cutters I could feel vibrating around me. They finally got to me and cut me out.

       FEMALE PASSENGER, AGED FORTY-FOUR, SEAT 19-D

      My seatmate [in 19-F], whom I had not seen before, now came to and began yelling, ‘Please help me, please, somebody help me.’ He had a tree lying on top of him, and I could only see his head and one boot. I asked him, ‘What do you want me to do?’ I could not get him out. I told him to try to think of something else. I knew I could get out, and I would send some help.

      I did not think the [fireball] caused my burns. I think that I got my burns when I shimmied out of the aeroplane. Everything that was metal was so hot it was like touching a hot griddle. As I got out through the tail I was still about eight feet off the ground. I saw the hood of a car that was slanted, and I slid off of it and ended up at the front porch of the house that was connected to the carport.

       FEMALE PASSENGER, AGED TWENTY [WITH A NINE-MONTH-OLD INFANT, WHO HAD DIED], SEAT 21-C

      I heard my baby calling to me after the aeroplane came to a rest. She was calling me: ‘Mama.’ A man…pulled me out of the plane and told me that my baby was okay. They said she was okay and that she was at another hospital.

       [The woman was unable to restrain her child during the impact and her child was thrown forward over three rows of seats and killed by trauma.]

       FLIGHT ATTENDANT RICHARD DeMARY

      At that point a few other passengers were coming out of the wreckage. Usually, when you think about an accident, you think everybody’s going to be going through the same thing. Karen’s [experience] of the accident was a little bit different because she was in the back of the aeroplane that broke apart. She had the impact. She had the debris flying through the cabin. She had the fireball. She had the smoke. So she had a lot of different elements to contend with. And then probably most importantly, Karen had the element of not having a usable exit. She was able with the assistance I think of a couple of passengers to get that back [emergency] door open [to] access the tail cone and found