The Evening News (4 page)

Partridge introduced himself and the others
.
Reaching down to the seat beside him, Vernon came up with three green
media badges. He passed them back
.”
These are temp; better clip them on
.
I already broke some rules, but like your girlfriend said, we ain't
burdened with time
.”

They had left the ramp area, crossed two taxiways and were traveling east
on a parallel access road. Two runways were ahead and to the right
.
Alongside the farther runway, emergency vehicles were assembling.

Rita Abrams, in the terminal, was talking on a pay phone with CRA's
Dallas bureau. The bureau chief, she had discovered, already knew of the
airport emergency and had been trying to get a local CBA crew to the
scene. He learned with delight of the presence of Rita and the others.
She told him to advise New York, then asked, "What's our satellite feed
situation
?
”

"Good. There's a mobile satellite van on the way from Arlington
.”

Arlington, she learned, was only thirteen miles away. The van, which
belonged to a CBA affiliate station, KDLS-TV, had been setting up for a
sports broadcast from Arlington Stadium, but now that story had been
abandoned and the van dispatched to DFW. The driver and technician would
be advised by cellular phone to cooperate with Rita, Partridge and the
others
.
The news excited and elated her. There was, she realized, now a good
possibility of getting a story and pictures to New York in time for the
first-feed National Evening News.

The station wagon carrying the CBA trio and the Timesman was nearing runway
17L-the figures denoted a magnetic heading of 170 degrees, almost due
south; the L showed it to be the left runway of two that were parallel. As
at all airports, the designation was in large white characters on the
runway surface
.
Still driving fast, Vernon explained, "A pilot in distress gets to choose
the runway he wants. Here it's usually one-seven left. That baby is two
hundred feet wide and closest to emergency help
.”

The station wagon halted on a taxiway that intersected 17L and from where
the incoming aircraft's approach and landing would be seen
.”
This will be the on-site command post
,”
Vernon said
.
Emergency vehicles were still arriving, some converging around them. From
the airport's fire-fighting force were seven yellow trucks-four mammoth
Oshkosh M 15 foam vehicles, an aerial ladder truck and two smaller Rapid
Intervention Vehicles. The foam trucks, riding on giant tires nearly six
feet high, with two engines, front and rear, and high-pressure projection
nozzles, were like self-contained fire stations. The RIV's, fast and
manoeuvrable
, were designed to go in close and quickly to a burning
aircraft
.
A half-dozen blue-and-whi
te police cruisers disgorged of
ficers who opened the cars' trunks, pulled out silver fire suits and climbed into them. Airport police were cross-trained in fire fighting, Vernon explained. On the station wagon's DPS radio a stream of orders could be heard
.
The fire trucks, supervised by a lieutenant in a yellow sedan, were
taking positions on ramps at intervals down the runway's length
.
Ambulances summoned from nearby communities were streaming into the
airport and assembling nearby, but clear of the runway area
.
Partridge had been the first to jump from the station wagon and, standing
beside it, was scribbling notes. Broderick, less hurriedly, was doing the
same. Minh Van Canh had clambered to the station wagon's roof and now
,
standing, his camera ready, was scanning the sky to the north. Behind him
was Ken O'Hara, trailing wires and a sound recorder
.
Almost at once the stricken inbound flight was visible, about five miles
out, with heavy black smoke behind it. Minh raised his camera, holding
it steady, one eye tight against the viewfinder
.
He was a sturdy, stocky figure, not much more than five feet tall, but
with broad shoulders and long, muscular arms. His squarish dark face
,
pockmarked from a childhood bout with smallpox, held wide brown eyes
which looked out impassively, unrevealing of what thoughts might lie
behind them. Those who were close to Minh said it took a long time to get
to know him
.
About some things, though, there was consensus-namely, that Minh was
industrious, reliable, honest, and one of the best TV cameramen in the
business. His pictures were more than good; they were invariably
attention-getting and oftentimes artistic. He had worked for CBA first
in Vietnam, as a local recruit who learned his trade from an American
cameraman for whom Minh carried equipment amid the jungle fighting. When
his mentor was killed after stepping on a land mine, Minh, unaided
,
carried his body back for burial, then returned with the camera into the
jungle where he continued filming. No one at CBA could ever remember
hiring him. His employment simply became a fait accompli.
In 1975, with the fall of Saigon imminent, Minh, his wife and two children
were among the all-too-few lucky ones airlifted from the U.S. Embassy
courtyard by CH-53 military helicopter to the safety of the American
Seventh Fleet at sea. Even then Minh filmed it all, and much of his footage
was used on the National Evening News
.
Now he was filming another aerial story, different but dramatic, whose
ending had yet to be determined
.
In the viewfinder the shape of the approaching Airbus was becoming clearer
.
Also clearer was a halo of bright flame on the right side with smoke
continuing to stream behind. It was possible to see the fire coming from
where an engine had been, and where now only a part of the engine pylon
remained. To Minh and others watching, it seemed amazing that the entire
airplane had not yet been engulfed
.
Inside the station wagon, Vernon had switched on an aviation band radio
.
Air Traffic Control could be heard speaking with the Airbus pilots. The
calm voice of a controller, monitoring their approach by radar, cautioned
,
"You are slightly below glide path . . . drifting left of center line .
.
. Now on glide path, on center line . .
.”

But the Airbus pilots were clearly having trouble holding altitude and an
even course. The plane seemed to be crabbing in, the damaged right wing
lower than the left. At moments the plane's nose veered away; then, as if
from urgent efforts in the cockpit, swung back toward the runway. There was
an uneven up-and-down movement as at one moment too much height was lost
,
at the next retrieved, but barely. Those on the ground were asking
themselves the tense, unspoken question: Having come this far, would the
Airbus make it all the way in? The answer seemed in doubt
.
On the radio, the voice of one of the pilots could be heard
.”
Tower, we
have landing-gear problems . . . hydraulic failure
.”

A pause
.”
We are
trying the gear down 'free fall' now
.”
A fire captain, also listening, had stopped beside them. Partridge asked
him, "What does that mean
?
”

"On big passenger planes there's an emergency system to
get the landing wheels down if hydraulic power is out. The pilots release all hydraulic power so the gear, which is heavy, should fall under its own weight, then lock. But once it's down they can't get it up again, even if they want to
.”

As the fireman spoke, the Airbus landing gear could be seen slowly coming
down
.
Moments later, once more the calm voice of an air traffic controller:
"Muskegon, we see your gear down. Be advised that flames are close to the
right front gear
.”

It was obvious that if the right front tires were consumed by fire, as
seemed probable, that side of the landing gear might collapse on impact
,
skewing the airplane to the right at high speed
.
Minh, fondling a zoom lens, had his camera running. He too could see the
flames which had now reached the tires. The Airbus was floating over the
airport boundary . . . Then it was closer in, barely a quarter mile from
the runway . . . It was going to make it to the ground, but the fire was
greater, more intense, clearly being fed by fuel, and two of the four
right-side tires were burning, the rubber melting . . . There was a flash
as one of the tires exploded
.
Now the burning Airbus was over the runway, its landing speed 150 mph
.
As the aircraft passed the waiting emergency vehicles, one by one they
swung onto the runway, following at top speed, tires screaming. Two
yellow foam trucks were the first to move, the other fire trucks close
behind
.
On the runway, as the airplane's landing gear made contact with the
ground, another right-side tire exploded, then another. Suddenly all
right tires disintegrated . . . the wheels were down to their rims
.
Simultaneously there was a banshee screech of metal, a shower of sparks
,
and a cloud of dust and cement fragments rose into the air . . . Somehow
,
miraculously, the pilots managed to hold the Airbus on the runway . .
.
It seemed to continue a long way and for a long time . . . At last it
stopped. As it did, the fire flared up
.
Still moving fast, the fire trucks closed in, within seconds pumping
foam. Gigantic whorls of it piled up with incredible speed, like a
mountain of shave cream.
On the airplane, several passenger doors were opening, escape slides
tumbling out. The forward door was open on the right side, but on that
side fire was blocking the mid-fuselage exits. On the left side, away
from the fire, another forward door and a mid-fuselage door were open
.
Some passengers were already coming down the slides
.
But at the rear, where there were two escape doors on each side, none had
so far opened
.
Through the three open doors, smoke from inside the airplane was pouring
out. Some passengers were already on the ground. The latest ones emerged
coughing, many vomiting, all gasping for fresh air
.
By now the exterior fire was dying down under a mass of foam on one side
of the airplane
.
Firemen from the RIV's, wearing silver protective clothing and breathing
apparatus, had swiftly moved in and rigged ladders to the unopened rear
doors. As the doors were opened manually from outside, more smoke poured
out. The firemen hurried inside, intent on extinguishing any interior
fire. Other firemen, entering the wrecked Airbus through the forward
doors, helped passengers to leave, some of them dazed and weak
.
Noticeably, the outward flow of passengers slowed. Harry Partridge made
a quick estimate that nearly two hundred people had emerged from the
plane's interior, though from the information he had gathered he knew
that 297, including crew, were reportedly aboard. Firemen began to carry
some who appeared badly burned-among them two women flight attendants
.
Smoke was still drifting from inside, though less of it than earlier
.
Minh Van Canh continued to videotape the action around him, thinking only
professionally, excluding other thoughts, though aware that he was the
only cameraman on the scene and in his camera he had something special
and unique. Probably not since the Hindenburg airship disaster had a
major air crash been recorded visually in such detail, while it happened
.
Ambulances had been summoned to the on-site command post. A dozen were
already th
ere, with more arriving. Param
edics worked on the injured, loading them onto numbered backboards. Within minutes the crash victims would be on their way to area hospitals alerted to receive them. With the arrival of a helicopter bringing doctors and nurses, the command post near the Airbus was becoming an improvised field hospital with a functioning triage system
.
The speed with which everything was happening spoke well, Partridge
thought, of the airport's emergency planning. He overheard the fire
captain report that a hundred and ninety passengers, more or less, were
out of the Airbus and alive. At the same time that left nearly a hundred
unaccounted for
.
A fireman, pulling off his respirator to wipe the sweat from his face
,
was heard to say, "Oh Christ! The back seats are chock full of dead. It
must have been where the smoke was thickest
.”