On Wednesday, August 20th, a plane crashed while taking off from the Madrid Barajas Intl. Airport. This is the same airport that I flew into and out of in January. This article is from the IHT, to read it in full,
click here.
Spaniards Mourn Victims of Plane Crash
MADRID: More than 150 people aboard a Spanair plane that veered off the runway at Barajas airport perished in an inferno that hundreds of rescue workers could not fight because they were unable to reach the fuselage through a raging brush fire ignited by the plane's fuel, rescue officials said Thursday.
Of the 172 passengers and crew members on board the plane, only 19 survived the crash and flames, with one of the severely injured dying overnight. On Thursday, Spain was a nation in mourning, flags were at half staff, the prime minister returned from vacation and the king and queen joined relatives mourning the 153 dead at a makeshift morgue.
The MD-82, manufactured by a company that has since become a subsidiary of Boeing, fumbled its takeoff, veered to the right, and exploded in a ball of flames just beyond Runway 36. The site was off limits to reporters and not visible Thursday, but pictures splashed across newspapers and spooled endlessly on television showed a charred area the size of two football fields around the wreckage.
Six or seven investigators, assisted by officials from Boeing, scoured a grim scene for clues. The two black boxes were recovered, although one was damaged, said Javier Mendoza, head of operations at Spanair.
Spanair officials confirmed Thursday that the plane had made a previous attempt to take off Wednesday afternoon. That first takeoff, almost two hours before the crash, was aborted by the pilot.
On the second, fatal takeoff, witnesses who spoke to the Spanish media reported seeing one of the plane's engines on fire, and speculated that the fuel stored in its wings for the four-hour flight to the Canary Islands, off the West African coast, ignited in the violence of the impact that split the body of the aircraft into pieces.
The airport's own fire service, on permanent standby near the scene of the catastrophe, reached the wreckage in minutes, said Pilar Fernández, an official with the Spanish rescue service Emergencia 112, which coordinated the salvage operation.
"We realized the magnitude of it from the moment it caught on fire, from the very first moments we saw the plane," she said in an interview. "The control tower saw there was something wrong and immediately sent out the alert."
Ambulances followed the first fire trucks, arriving within six or seven minutes of the call's going out for help, she said. In all, 1,000 emergency workers flocked to the scene.
But the first firefighters to reach the plane, and reinforcements from the Madrid District who arrived within the first 15 minutes, had to contend with a brush fire that engulfed the tinder-dry grass around the plane.
"They went into the area with the least fire to get to the survivors and only after that could they get to the other parts," Fernandez said.
A fire brigade official for the Madrid district, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said 70 of his men had reached the scene within 15 minutes of the crash at 2:45 p.m. on Wednesday.
"Our firemen were first assigned to put out the flames and then to help those who were rescuing the survivors," he said. "Four fire-fighting helicopters poured water on the fire."
He said small fires were still burning on the plane, even as they put out the brush fire; it took two hours to extinguish the last flames.
At La Paz hospital, Burgueño said, nine trauma experts were on hand, as well as plastic surgeons, anesthetists, bone surgeons and other specialists to care for six victims. "One has burns, and five are receiving trauma treatment, some in intensive care," he said.
Asked how some survivors could have escaped the third-degree burns that left others still struggling for their lives, he said they owed their escape to where they were sitting in the aircraft when it hit ground.
Those thrown from the fuselage when the plane split apart were injured, but not burned, he said. One small boy escaped with a broken leg and scratches.
After the plane veered off the runway, it plunged into the sunburnt hillside beside a service road, careered into small stream, and broke apart, according to diagrams splashed across double-page spreads of the daily El Pais.
Grieving relatives, some brought to Madrid from Las Palmas in the Canary Islands on a specially chartered flight, were gathered at an exhibition center close to the airport that had been transformed into a temporary morgue. About 40 doctors were conducting autopsies, and 150 psychologists were on hand to help families and friends through the trauma.
"There are some very tough cases. In some families four people died," said Miriam Gonzáles Pablo, one of the psychologists.
Mendoza said during a news conference in Madrid that the first take-off attempt was delayed by an air intake valve that had reported overheating under the cockpit of the plane, The Associated Press reported. Technicians fixed the problem by turning it off, he said, adding that this was an accepted procedure.
The device was not on a list of equipment that must be working for a plane to take off, he said.
The AP quoted Alvaro Gammicchia, a pilot with the Spanish flag carrier Iberia with seven years' experience flying MD-82 aircraft, as saying that even without the gauge "the plane would not fail to the point of causing a tragedy."
Spanair executives would not say what they thought had caused the disaster.
