Saturday, June 13, 2009

AIR COLLISION THEN FINAL MOMENTS BEFORE DEATH


As my blogs this week have been on the heavy side I was looking for a little light relief for the weekend. I have failed you miserably!

In my inbox I found an email and photographs from a reader that quite frankly left me stunned. I used to visit New York a lot but having watched the events of 9/11 unfold on my TV screen as they happened I am not sure I could ever visit there again. The Air France crash has also left me cold. I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the photographs or the caption – you look, you read, you decide!

“Un amigo me ha enviado este correo. No hay palabras para la persona que tuvo la valentía de hacer estas fotos justamente antes de morir. La vocación de los que amamos la fotografía.”

Yesterday the world saw the disappearance of an A330 Air France during a trans Atlantic flight between Rio to Paris. Very ironic that a day before I got a mail of the photos taken by a passenger on a flight mins after a mid air collision, and mins before the crash of the said aircraft. Two shots taken inside the plane before it crashed. Unbelievable! Photos taken inside the GOLB 737 aircraft that was involved in a mid air collision and crashed.....

A B737 had a mid air collision with the Embraer Legacy while cruising at 35,000 feet over South America. The Embraer Legacy, though seriously damaged with the winglet ripped off, managed to make a landing at a nearby airstrip in the midst of the Amazon jungle. The crew and passengers of the Embraer Legacy had no idea what they had hit. The B737 however crashed, killing all crew and passengers on board.

The two photos attached were apparently taken by one of the passengers in the B737, just after the collision and before the aircraft crashed. The photos were retrieved from the camera's memory stick. You will never get to see photos like this. In the first photo, there is a gaping hole in the fuselage through which you can see the tail plane and vertical fin of the aircraft. In the second photo, one of the passengers is being sucked out of the gaping hole.

These photos were found in a digital Casio Z750, amidst the remains in Serra do Cachimbo. Although the camera was destroyed, the Memory Stick was recovered. Investigating the serial number of the camera, the owner was identified as Paulo G. Muller, an actor of a theatre for children known in the outskirts of Porto Alegre. It can be imagined that he was standing during the impact with the Embraer Legacy and during the turbulence, he managed to take these photos, just seconds after the tail loss the aircraft plunged. So the camera was found near the cockpit. The structural stress probably ripped the engines away, diminishing the falling speed, protecting the electronic equipment but not unfortunately the victims. Paulo Muller leaves behind two daughters, Bruna and Beatriz.

4 comments:

Janna said...

Sancho, Sancho ... have you "Lost" the plot.

simon said...

Very good Janna :)

SANCHO said...

I received this email today from the source of the aircraft photos. You might be surprised - I am not. I did say you look, you read, you decide - had I believed they were anything but fakes I would not have posted them. Still pleased to see it got some of you stirred if not shaken.

"Hola: acbo de recibir un correo, en el que se me indica que las fotos que os hice llegar son falsas, sino que alguien las ha compuesto y simulado. No sé lo que hay de cierto en ello. Que cada cual lo tome como le parezca. De todos modos, si es así se trata de una broma pesada yde lo más macabro: es jugar con la vida de las personas."

blue said...

"The images above are video captures from the pilot episodes of the ABC television series Lost (note the handcuffs worn by the woman pictured on the left, a character recognizable to viewers of the series as Kate Austen, played by actress Evangeline Lilly). Similar images can be seen in video trailers for the series."
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_photos_gol_737_crash.htm