Six Survive Plane Crash Rescue Workers Sift Through Debris On Colombian Mountain
The first reports were as devastating as the accident - no survivors.
When the American Airlines jet smashed into an Andean mountain crest and exploded, all 164 people on board were presumed dead. But as rescue workers made their way to the site early Thursday, braving darkness, rocky terrain and the threat of leftist guerrillas, the unexpected news came: At least six people lived.
Human remains and bits of mangled machinery covered a onemile area where the flight from Miami went down in Buga, 40 miles and four minutes away from its destination in the Colombian city of Cali.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known.
At the scene, golf clubs, tennis shoes and a small plastic statue of the Virgin Mary sat in a pile. Rescue workers made other piles for passports and identification cards. One survivor spoke to a television crew as rescue workers attended him.
“Really, I don’t remember any problem with the plane, but when I woke up … and saw everything scattered around me, I realized we were in an accident,” Gonzalo Dussan, one of the survivors, told Noticiero 24 Horas as rescue workers attended to him.
By late Thursday afternoon, the Red Cross in Cali said eight people had been taken from the wreckage alive; one, a man, died at a hospital five hours later. But RCN radio later reported only seven people had been taken from the crash, six of whom have survived.
Mauricio Reyes, a 19-year-old Colombian business student at the University of Michigan, was recovering at a Cali hospital Thursday, covered with cuts and bruises, breathing through an oxygen mask.
His brother, Andres Reyes, hugged relatives when they learned Mauricio was alive.
“After all I’ve cried, what incredible joy,” he said.
The others, identified by RCN radio, were Dussan’s son and daughter Gonzalo and Michel, and two women named Nancy Delgado and Mercedes Ramirez.
American Airlines said the plane carried 156 passengers, four of them infants, and eight crew members. It was not immediately clear how many Americans were aboard.
The crew included Capt. Nicholas Tafuri, 57, of Marco Island, Fla., and First Officer Don Williams, 39, of New Smyrna Beach, Fla.
Among the passengers were Paris Kanellakis, a Brown University computer science professor, and his wife and two children. Also believed aboard were the son, daughter-in-law and grandchild of former Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre.
The airline said it would not release a full passenger list until relatives were notified. It did not say how long that would take.
Bob Crandall, American Airlines’ chief executive officer, said there were no reports of bad weather and that the flight crew knew the terrain.
Initial reports from civil defense authorities indicate the plane hit one side of the crest and slid over, suggesting the pilot was descending with the plane’s nose up, as if reacting to imminent danger.
In Miami, the FBI said an unsigned letter was faxed Monday to The Miami Herald and The New York Times warning of bomb attacks against flights from Venezuela and Colombia.
FBI spokesman Paul Miller said there was no reason to believe the letter was linked to the crash. Still, the National Transportation Safety Board sent an investigative team that included an expert on explosions and fires.
Map of crash site