Congolese Plane Crashes
Several people sent me this NYT article, today, about a plane crash in Goma. I’m hoping that no one at the HEAL hospital was hurt. The crash was definitely far enough from the Goma Student Fund school that the kids were safe.
As I wrote back to the Tree, air safety in that part of the world is abysmal, particularly in the Congo. Ihere were two plane crashes in or near Goma in the six weeks that I was there. Most of the pilots I hung out with were fly-by-the-seat-of-their pants South Africans, and they all had tons of horror stories. I decided never to fly with any of them…
In any case, the her father had this story to tell:
I remember the Congo air transport infrastructure as made up of clapped Antonov planes from the former Soviet Union, flown by former soviet pilots and crew who looked about as beat up as their planes. We (me and the photographer) persuaded one crew to fly to the interior (as promised on the schedule) with the timely presentation of a bottle of scotch. Later on someone tried to hijack that same flight, attempt being thwarted by the intervention of a passenger who strangled one of the hijackers.
UPDATE: The HEAL Africa hospital is full of the injured and working hard to provide care.
UPDATE: From Camille, who works at the US Embassy in Goma:
An American family was on the flight that crashed today in Goma. Barry and Mary Beth Mosier and their children April and Andrew managed to escape from the burning aircraft. They are all okay. Andrew, 3 ½, got a leg cast after being injured trying to get out of the plane. We visited them a few minutes ago; they were, obviously, tired from the whole ordeal but grateful to still be around.
