Drones scouring crash site
MISSION: SEARCH FOR VICTIMS Recovery difficult because of velocity of plane’s nosedive.
– Recovery teams yesterday deployed drones and thermal imaging equipment across a mountainous area where a China Eastern plane inexplicably crashed with 132 people on board.
Four days after flight MU5735 ploughed into rugged terrain near Wuzhou in southern China, officials are still yet to declare all of the 123 passengers and nine crew dead.
More human remains have been found, officials confirmed yesterday, but the velocity of a crash – which punched a crater into the muddy ground and scattered plane parts and passenger belongings across a wide area – has complicated recovery work.
“Most of the aircraft wreckage is concentrated in a core area within a radius of about 30 metres from the main impact point,” said Zhu Tao of China’s aviation authority.
“The depth extends down from the surface to about 20 metres.”
Monday’s crash is almost certainly China’s worst air disaster in three decades and President Xi Jinping was swift to order a full investigation.
Wiping away tears, her arms supported by two men, a distraught relative arrived at the entrance point to the crash area yesterday morning, according to an AFP reporter.
Under pouring rain, she joined scores of firefighters, paramilitary police and reporters to trudge across the rough terrain to where eviscerated chunks of jet have been found – the result of the plane’s as yet unexplained nosedive.
Hundreds of relatives of victims have arrived in the southern Chinese city, awaiting confirmation of their worst fears.
Despite the odds, searchers yesterday were yet to rule out finding people trapped on the densely forested, mud-slicked slopes.
The “mission is mainly focused on searching for victims and saving lives”, said Huang Shangwu of Guangxi Fire and Rescue Force, citing instructions “from headquarters”.
He said: “We are using thermal imagers and life detectors to search the surface... we also use manual searches and aerial drones.”
At the same time, teams are scouring the landscape for the remaining black box – after a damaged voice recorder was recovered on Wednesday and sent to Beijing for analysis.
Experts hope it will yield clues to the cause of the crash, which saw the Boeing 737-800 – flying between Kunming and Guangzhou – drop thousands of metres in just minutes.
State broadcaster CCTV showed rescuers lifting what appeared to be a chunk of the aeroplane’s wing as they expanded the search area.
Pieces of engine are also among the wreckage recovered, according to state news agency Xinhua.
Tracking website FlightRadar24 showed the plane rapidly dropped from an altitude of about 8 900metres to 2 400 metres in just over a minute.
China Eastern confirmed yesterday at a press conference it had grounded all 223 of its Boeing 737-800 aeroplanes for safety checks, as the airline launches a safety overhaul following the crash. –
Despite Bokaba’s name appearing on the task team list, the league’s North West provincial task team co-ordinator, Wessels Morweng, said he did not recognise his name but “it rings a bell”.