The aftermath
Canadian families try to make sense of tragedy as experts probe accident
Others ground Boeing aircraft but Canada says it is safe,
Half the world away, investigators are still sifting through the wreckage of a crashed Ethiopian Airlines flight in a field outside of Addis Ababa.
Blackened pieces of fuselage, wings, and body — still emblazoned with the colours of the Ethiopian flag — are splayed across the crash site, along with more tangible leavings of the 157 passengers and crew aboard. At least one of the aircraft’s safety instruction cards survived. So, too, did dozens of loose cigarettes. Heaps of colourful scarves, handbags and books sit in piles outside of the impact crater. A single shoe sitting right-side up in the dirt caught the attention of a photojournalist’s lens the day of the crash. But none of their owners survived.
As aviation experts arrive from the United States and help piece together exactly what caused Flight ET302 to drop out of the sky six minutes after takeoff on Sunday, the families and friends of the 18 Canadians killed in the crash are mourning their loved ones from coast to coast to coast. For Mohamed Hassan Ali, the elder brother of Edmonton’s Amina Ibrahim Odowa — who died in the crash alongside her 5-year-old daughter, Safiya Faisal Abdulkadir Egal — it could be some time before their family is able to secure her remains.
“We don’t have the body to come to a closure,” Ali said.
There aren’t any burial arrangements yet for his younger sister and niece because it’s unclear when their remains will come home. Ali originally intended to fly to Ethiopia himself, but said there isn’t any reason to go right now. Ethiopian authorities have given next to no information.
“At this point, there’s nothing,” he said.
Few details of the crash are known at this point, but data from Flightradar24 showed the routine flight to Nairobi quickly went awry. The plane’s vertical speed quickly became erratic and, shortly after takeoff, pilot Yared Getachew issued a distress call. He was told to return to the airport, but was unreachable six minutes later. The tragedy has led to safety concerns with Boeing’s 737 Max 8 aircraft.
Airlines in China, Indonesia, South Africa, the Cayman Islands and Morocco have temporarily grounded those aircraft as a precaution.
However, Transport Minister Marc Garneau said the Canadian government wouldn’t follow suit because it isn’t clear why the flight crashed in the first place.
“Well, I think that would be premature,” Garneau said. “The first thing is to determine the cause of that accident, and there are all kinds of possibilities as to why that accident occurred.”
Throughout the day on Monday, the family and friends of other Canadian victims continued to come to terms with their grief. Those who died had been aboard the flight for a myriad of reasons. The 157 dead, from 35 different countries, included law students, tourists, writers, academics and aid workers and employees of the United Nations. Some of the Canadians, such as Angela Rehhorn and Micah Messent, had been on their way to take part in the United Nations Assembly of the Environment in Kenya on Monday. In a surprise Facebook post — the last Messent ever made — he shared his excitement about the impending trip.
“I’ll have the chance to meet with other passionate youth and leaders from around the world and explore how we can tackle the biggest challenges that are facing our generation,” he wrote on March 8. “I’m so grateful for this opportunity and want to thank all of the people in my life who have helped me get this far.”
Other Canadians aboard the flight had been visiting relatives. Derick Lwugi, an accountant with the City of Calgary, was on his way to visit both his and his wife’s parents in western Kenya.
His mother hadn’t been feeling well. He leaves behind his wife and three children, aged 17, 19 and 20.
One-third of the Canadian victims came from one family. Six members of the Dixit family, spanning three generations, were flying to Kenya for March break. The elders — Pannagesh, 73, and Hansini Vaidya, 67 — hadn’t returned to the country in over 30 years. All of them perished.
“It’s really hard to believe that this thing happened,” Hiral Vaidya said. “It’s hard to recover because we lost six members. And they were all very close to us.”
Kenya suffered the biggest loss among the countries represented on the flight, losing 32 of its citizens. The United Nations, which has major operations in both Kenya and Ethiopia, was the hardest-hit organization.
Many of the 19 UN staffers on board Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 were travelling to Nairobi for the environmental assembly. It opened Monday with flags at half-staff outside and a minute of silence for the victims.