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xx | At the time of the crash I had just turned 11 but I still have some live memories of those moments. My family and I were planning to go to San Francisco and then Mexico; I was sit with my brother on the second or third row of the economic class, right after the business class finished. We were at the beginning of the wing, on the right seats. There was my eldest brother Marco in the window seat (he was 16 at that time), my middle brother in the center (he was 13) and I was on the corridor.My parents were in the last row of the business class, in the center of the aircraft.I don’t have so clear memories of that accident but I remember a very ironic thing that happen. Just before departing, there were the safety instructions being displayed on a big screen at the center of the aircraft; and I clearly remember that I said to my middle brother “Come on, what you think it could happen? Is impossible.”And it happened!Sometimes I think that we just needed 5 seconds more and we would have been all death. That’s incredible what happened, also because you probably know that on july 30th, other two planes crashed down, one in China and one in India. And there were very few survivors in both the other flights. Three accident in a day. I think it never happened in all history.But we have been really lucky.At the moment of the crash and when I realized that the plane had gone out of the track and broke its front wheel, I just remember how quickly me and my brothers jumped out of the plane, screaming. You could hear people saying that they didn’t want to die, that there was a bomb, pushing each others on the way to the front exit. I just wonder what it could have been for those that were sit at the end of the plane, unable to use the exits there. While we were escaping, my mum grabbed my arm and stopped us; they wanted to be sure that we were all there before leaving the aircraft. And there were all these people just jumping from the front exit, as the plane was basically touching the ground. And the first moment that I saw the plane from outside, with all the rear covered by flames, I just felt like crying. And I did. My family and I were luckily all together and we just moved as far as we could as we were afraid that it could explode. 90 seconds after it was like the set of a movie for me: helicopters, firemen everywhere…And at that moment I thought that it was exciting. You know, I was a kid and my brothers too; after the first shock, we didn’t realize that someone could have died or was injured. We were just watching it burning and I thought how brave were those firemen to get so close to that plane that could explode in seconds. But we weren’t scared anymore. Probably my father was more scared than me and my brothers.I have read somewhere that you have one chance out of 15.000.000 to have a plane crash but the chances to die on that crash are, of course, much higher.If this is not luck…, well I should try with the lottery now.Luca Calegaro |
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© 2004 E. Kaye Chandler. Printing file duplication or Internet publishing is prohibited without prior written permission from the author. | ||||||