Tag Archives: recovery efforts

Confusion, grief as hunt for remains from Ethiopia crash halted

FILE PHOTO: Ethiopians search for remains at the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 plane crash before a commemoration ceremony at the scene of the crash, near the town of Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 13, 2019. REUTERS/Baz Ratner

By Maggie Fick

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – A child’s foot. Fingers. A passport.

Body parts and personal effects were still strewn across the crash site of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 15, a witness told Reuters, five days after the disaster and the day before recovery efforts were halted.

With the site now fenced off, bereaved families are worried the remains of their loved ones may be left at the scene, compounding their anguish.

Citizens of 35 nations were aboard when the Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet nosedived into a field on March 10 six minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people onboard.

Families of those who perished complain of a lack of information about recovery efforts, which saw Ethiopian workers using metal parts of the aircraft to dig in the soil.

Religions such as Islam and Judaism require quick burials, but authorities said last week that identifying remains – many burned or in small pieces – might take six months.

“At the beginning, (the Ethiopian authorities) should have blocked off that place and sent an organized team to search, instead of just leaving it open. I’m unhappy about that. It’s supposed to be easier if it’s in the government’s hands,” said Milka Yimam, a dual Ethiopia-Israeli citizen whose 26-year-old son Sidrak died.

Relatives of the victims who visited the site on Monday said it had been cordoned off and the ground leveled, apart from the impact crater. The dead included a grand-niece of consumer advocate and former U.S. presidential candidate Ralph Nader.

Excavation was halted last Saturday, ministry of transport spokesman Musie Yehyies told Reuters.

“Excavation has ended for the moment since we have got everything we think we need at the moment. The site has been enclosed and can be revisited,” he said on Friday.

Global attention has mostly shifted to an investigation into the cause of the disaster, and similarities with the crash of a Lion Air 737 MAX plane in Indonesia last October that killed 189 people. Pilots of both aircraft reported control problems and crashed minutes after take-off.

The world’s entire 737 MAX fleet was grounded after the Ethiopia crash, with Boeing losing about 12 percent – or $28 billion – of its market value since the disaster.

But as headlines focus on the investigation and its financial fallout, families fear the spotlight has shifted from recovery efforts.

DIPLOMATIC PRESSURE

Israelis whose bodies are not recovered are officially listed at home as “disappeared” rather than “dead” – a status that can cause complications for relatives in matters ranging from inheritance to remarrying.

Some Jewish traditions also require a piece of the body be buried before mourning can begin, with the soul not able to rest until then, giving the families’ quest an agonizing urgency.

So the Israeli embassy has been working hard to retrieve the remains of its two citizens who died in the crash, families told Reuters.

But it hasn’t been easy. After being bounced between various government ministries, the ambassador eventually wrote to the airline to get access to the crash site, a source familiar with matter said. He got no reply – until the Israeli prime minister intervened by phoning his Ethiopian counterpart.

The ambassador and representatives of Israeli volunteer rescue and recovery organization ZAKA were finally able to access the site last Friday. They have not been allowed back.

The embassy said on Thursday ZAKA had been told it could not return to retrieve remains due to a “procedural matter” and that Ethiopia did not want to grant access for other nations.

The Ethiopian ministries of transport and foreign affairs did not respond to a request for comment.

CONFUSION OVER PASSENGERS

An Interpol-led group of nations including Germany and Canada are supporting the DNA testing, three Addis Ababa-based diplomatic sources said. Ethiopia has also contracted British firm Blake Emergency Services to recover and return the remains. The firm did not respond to requests for comment.

Remains recovered so far have been bagged and stored in an out-of-the-way area of Addis Ababa’s Bole airport, in refrigeration units usually used to store roses destined for export, before being moved to the capital’s St. Paul’s Hospital, two sources told Reuters.

Halting excavations could complicate matters for many countries, some of which are still unsure how many of their citizens were lost.

Although 18 of the victims have been identified as Canadian, others had connections to Canada, meaning its embassy has been supporting more families, said Canada’s ambassador to Ethiopia, Antoine Chevrier. Some were also dual nationals.

Ethiopian Airlines has not published the full passenger list with names and dates of birth. It did not respond to questions over when the list might be published.

Until that is done, confusion remains over dual nationals, and the citizenship of seven people onboard the flight is still not public, diplomats told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Jason Neely in Addis Ababa and Katharine Houreld in Nairobi; Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Mark Potter)

Indonesian divers, ‘pinger locators’, hunt for doomed plane’s cockpit recorders

Rescue workers of crashed Lion Air flight JT610 carry a body bag off a boat at Tanjung Priok port in Jakarta, Indonesia, October 30, 2018. REUTERS/Edgar Su

By Fathin Ungku and Yuddy Cahya

JAVA SEA, Indonesia (Reuters) – Indonesia deployed divers on Tuesday to search for an airliner that crashed with 189 people on board, as “pinger locators” tried to zero in on its cockpit recorders and find out why an almost-new plane went down in the sea minutes after take-off.

Indonesia, one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets, has a patchy safety record. With the now almost certain prospect of all on board having died, the crash is set to rank as its second-worst air disaster.

Ground staff lost contact with flight JT610 of budget airline Lion Air 13 minutes after the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft took off early on Monday from the airport in Jakarta, the capital, on its way to the tin-mining town of Pangkal Pinang.

Dozens of relatives of those on board gathered at a police hospital where body bags were brought for forensic doctors to try to identify victims, including by taking saliva swabs from family members for DNA tests.

“I keep praying for a miracle although logically, the plane has sunk in the ocean,” said Toni Priyono Adhi, whose daughter was on the flight.

“But as a parent, I want a miracle.”

A Reuters witness on a boat at the crash site saw about 60 divers scattered in inflatable boats over the slightly choppy waters entering the sea, which is about 35 meters (115 feet) deep.

Sonar vessels and an underwater drone have also been hunting for the wreckage of the fuselage, where many victims were feared trapped, officials said.

The head of a national transport safety panel, Soerjanto Tjahjono, said that underwater “pinger locators”, including equipment from Singapore, were being deployed to help find the aircraft’s black boxes.

The priority is finding the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder to help determine the cause of the disaster, safety experts said.

Soldiers drag an inflatable raft as they carry debris of the Lion Air flight JT610 airplane that crashed into the sea, as they walk at Tanjung Pakis beach in Karawang, Indonesia, October 30, 2018. Antara Foto/Ibnu Chazar via REUTERS

Soldiers drag an inflatable raft as they carry debris of the Lion Air flight JT610 airplane that crashed into the sea, as they walk at Tanjung Pakis beach in Karawang, Indonesia, October 30, 2018. Antara Foto/Ibnu Chazar via REUTERS

“The visibility is not good as it’s very overcast,” a special forces officer said.

Underwater footage released by the national search and rescue agency showed relatively poor visibility. In all, 35 vessels are helping to search.

The focus was initially an area within 5 nautical miles of where the plane lost contact, but that was expanded to 10 nautical miles on Tuesday and will be expanded to 15 on Wednesday, a search and rescue agency officer said.

But only debris, personal items, including 52 identification cards and passports, and body parts have been found off the shore of Karawang district, east of Jakarta.

Police said human remains were collected in 37 body bags after sweeps of the site, roughly 15 km (nine miles) off the coast.

Most of those on board were Indonesian but the airline has said an Italian passenger and Indian pilot were on the plane.

Relatives of passengers on the crashed Lion Air flight JT610 wait at Bhayangkara R. Said Sukanto hospital in Jakarta, Indonesia, October 30, 2018. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan

Relatives of passengers on the crashed Lion Air flight JT610 wait at Bhayangkara R. Said Sukanto hospital in Jakarta, Indonesia, October 30, 2018. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan

EARLIER TECHNICAL PROBLEM?

The pilot of flight JT610 had asked to return to base shortly after it took off, at about 6.20 a.m. on Monday. Investigators are trying to determine why the pilot issued the request, which was granted.

The deputy of the national transportation safety committee told a news conference the plane had technical problems on its previous flight, from the city of Denpasar on Bali island on Sunday, including an issue over “unreliable airspeed”.

“We are also asking for information from the last pilot who flew from Denpasar to Jakarta, but we have not met the technician,” Haryo Satmiko said, referring to the technician who handled the aircraft after it landed on Sunday.

The committee also had a recording of the conversation between the pilot of JT610 before it crashed and the control tower at Jakarta, he said.

Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi told reporters at Jakarta’s dock that the investigation would result in sanctions being handed out, but he did not elaborate.

Lion had operated 11 Boeing 737 MAX 8s and a transport ministry official said inspections would be made on all of those models operating in Indonesia though they would not be grounded.

On Monday, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing Co said they were providing assistance for the investigation.

The accident is the first to be reported involving the widely sold Boeing 737 MAX, an updated, more fuel-efficient version of the manufacturer’s workhorse single-aisle jet.

Two witnesses described the plane as swaying or rocking as it came down, adding that the nose hit the water first and there was a tall column of smoke afterward.

The aircraft did not make a noise when it came down, they said.

“From a long way off, it was already leaning,” said Gauk, a fisherman who uses one name.

Privately owned Lion Air, founded in 1999, said the aircraft, which had been in operation since August, was airworthy, with its pilot and co-pilot together having amassed 11,000 hours of flying time.

Indonesia’s worst air disaster was in 1997, when a Garuda Indonesia A300 crashed in the city of Medan, killing 234 people.

(Additional reporting by Cindy Silviana, Bernadette Christina Munthe, Agustinus Beo Da Costa, Fergus Jensen, Fransiska Nangoy, Gayatri Suroyo and Fanny Potkin in JAKARTA; Writing by John Chalmers and Ed Davies; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Robert Birsel)