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| Emergency workers watch an engine lifted from the TransAsia Airways Flight GE222 crash site on the outlying Taiwan island of Penghu, Friday, July 25, 2014. Investigators on Friday were examining wreckage and flight data recorders for clues into a plane crash on the Taiwanese island that killed 48 people. |
XIXI, Taiwan
(AP) -- The 10 survivors of Taiwan's worst air disaster in more than a
decade include a 34-year-old woman who called her father after
scrambling from the wreckage and seeking help at a nearby home.
Hung
Yu-ting escaped through a hole in the fuselage that opened up after the
plane plowed into homes Wednesday while attempting to land on the
outlying resort island of Penghu, killing 48 people. She used the phone
at the nearby house to call her father.
"She
called me on the phone to say the plane had crashed and exploded but
that she had already crawled out and I should come right away to get
her," said Hung's father, Hung Chang-ming, who lives just a few hundred
meters (yards) from the crash site.
Hung rushed to the scene, but his daughter had already been taken away by rescuers.
"When
I was halfway there the fire was still really big, but it was smaller
when I arrived on the scene," Hung told reporters. "There were two other
injured outside and the first ambulance had already taken away three,
including my daughter."
Hung Chang-ming joined
rescuers and other residents in putting out the fire and rescuing other
survivors before going to the hospital to check on his daughter.
Hung
Yu-ting was recovering Friday from burns to her arms, legs and back
suffered during her escape. The condition of the other survivors wasn't
immediately known.
Other relatives weren't so lucky, some recalling the last phone conversations with their loved ones.
Shu
Chi-tse said he had spoken to his son, Shu Chong-tai, just before the
flight left the southern city of Kaohsiung on Taiwan's main island for
the short ride west across the Taiwan Strait.
"He is a good boy. He cares for me and his mom. He loves his grandma a lot," Shu said.
Among
the dead were all four members of the flight crew, a family of six and a
family of four. They included several children, among them 9-year-old
Ho Po-yu, who was returning home to Penghu with his mother after
attending a summer camp for young choral singers.
Stormy
weather and low visibility are thought to have been factors in the
crash of the twin-propeller ATR-72 operated by TransAsia Airways.
The
investigation is expected to focus on a four-minute gap between the
pilot's request for a second approach and the plane's crashing into
village homes at 7:10 p.m., during which visibility dropped by half.
One
of the questions is why the pilots decided to proceed with the flight
despite rough weather on the heels of a typhoon that had forced the
cancellation of about 200 flights earlier in the day. However, aviation
authorities said conditions were safe for flying and two other planes
had landed at Penghu prior to the crash.
The
mother of one of the victims screamed at TransAsia Chairman Vincent Lin
when he arrived to pay respects at the funeral hall Friday.
Lin kneeled down, bowed to the woman and apologized.
"Give
me back my son, he is only 27 years old," the woman cried. "He is still
young, but now he is lying there at the morgue. I want my son back."
"This
is an unpredictable tragedy. The priority for us is to assist victims'
relatives," Lin later told reporters as Buddhist monks conducted rituals
for the dead.
Local media reported Friday
that the plane's cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder had
been sent to the main island of Taiwan for analysis. One of the devices
was damaged in the crash and ensuing fire, and it wasn't immediately
clear when results of the investigation would be made public.
The
TransAsia crash was Taiwan's first deadly civil aviation accident since
2002, when a China Airlines plane went down shortly after takeoff,
killing 225.
