Associated Press, "TAM
Brazil Crash Death Toll Reaches 189, Expected to Climb"
The
pilot of an airliner that burst into flames after trying
to land on a short, rain-slicked runway apparently tried
to take off again, barely clearing rush-hour traffic
on a major highway. The death toll rose Wednesday to
189 and could climb higher. The runway at Sao Paulo's
Congonhas airport has been repeatedly criticized as dangerously
short. Two planes slipped off it in rainy weather just
a day earlier. Pilots call it the "aircraft carrier" --
it's so short and surrounded by heavily populated neighborhoods
that they're told to take off again and fly around if
they overshoot the first 1,000 feet (305 meters) of runway.
"What appears
to have happened is that he (the pilot) didn't manage to land and he tried to
take off again," said Capt. Marcos, a spokesman for the Sao Paulo Fire Department
who would only identify himself by rank and first name in accordance with department
guidelines. The plane -- a domestic flight from Porto Alegre -- cleared the airport
fence and the busy highway, but slammed into a gas station and a TAM airlines
building, causing an inferno. Temperatures reached 1,000 degrees Centigrade (1,830
degrees Fahrenheit) inside the plane, and officials said there was no way passengers
could have survived.
"All of a sudden
I heard a loud explosion, and the ground beneath my feet shook," said Elias
Rodrigues Jesus, a TAM worker, who was walking nearby when he saw the jet explode. "I
looked up and I saw a huge ball of fire, and then I smelled the stench of kerosene
and sulfur." TAM Linhas Aereas SA said 186 were on the Airbus A320 -- 162
passengers, 18 TAM employees and a crew of six -- and officials said three bodies
of people killed on the ground had been recovered. There were fears of more dead
on the ground, with 14 others taken to hospitals, where their conditions were
not known. Ninety badly charred bodies, along with the "black box" flight
data recorder, had been pulled from the wreckage by midmorning, firefighters
said.
