You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Asiana Crash at San Francisco Airport.
2 dead. Hundreds injured.
My first thought upon seeing the breaking news? How did everyone not die? What caused this gigantic plane to end up in the grass on its side? Did it explode? Was it terrorism?
Saturday July 6th, 2:30 pm, the breaking news banner is blaring across the screen.
The imagery is shocking, alarming, concerning.
A Boeing 777 is smoldering on the runway. The roof is ripped off like a tin can. The interior of the plane is charred like burnt paper in a campfire.
If there’s anything you don’t want; it’s your aircraft to look like it spent the weekend at a boy scout jamboree.
The CNN anchors are talking about what they see, which is devastating. The view is horrific, but the information extremely limited.
Human tendency is to guess what happened, but that is not journalism. So the anchor does his best to describe the scene, repeatedly, recapping the same paragraph of information.
He talks about a smattering of rescue vehicles but no signs of immediate emergency. The scene is terrible, but somehow calm, he says over and over.
The anchors can only tell us that the plane had 300 passengers and crew and it came from Seoul. The news people will tell us about the safety characteristics of the 777.
There will be a press briefing early on with a PIO at SFO.
The man is surrounded by hungry news wolves.
What happened? they shout.
“We don’t know that yet,” he says calmly.
How many people died?
“We don’t know that yet,” he says if the video was rewound.
There are reports the plane lost power?
“We don’t have that information, I’m sorry,” he will say multiple times.
The only thing he is sure of his name, which he spells for a reporter in the middle of a frenzy of questions.
The man is calm while the surge around him is intensifying. It’s like trying to remain calm swimming in a puddle of bloody chum.
This is a tough place to be for news people and airport officials.
One end of the equation you have the media hooked up to live trucks broadcasting to a thirsty world that wants to drink in the enormity of this disaster. On the other end of the equation you have the PIO whose job is to supply information and he is doing so a drip drop at a time.
The PIO leaves the podium and promises more information soon. You can almost hear the exasperation of those gathered.
In the initial stages of this breaking news storm, the informational void is so pronounced, CNN and Fox will both air this worthless PIO interview where he spells his own name at least twice.
As the hours slide by, we learn just how amazing this event is.
2 dead. 182 treated. Everyone else accounted for.
Sadly the two dead are 16 year old girls, both of whom were seated in the tail section.
Both girls were found on the runway. One might have been ejected when the tail struck the runway. The other girl, sadly, may have been run over by a responding fire truck.
It will be some time before autopsy spell out these gory details.
Hours later we are getting consistent eye witness accounts that all say the plane was coming in low and slow and the tail hit the ground first.
CNN shows a graphic that is revealing. A plane coming in steep and slow and the back end striking the break water. The tail rips off, the plane slides sideways into the grass.
The chairman of the NTSB is Deborah Hersman.
“The damage inside the plane is striking,” she will say. “It is thankful we didn’t have more fatalities. It is really good news as far as a survivable accident.”
While the story is this news cycle’s fresh meat, it is all ready beginning to give way to a spinning globe that is constantly changing its perspective.
Egypt quickly moves up the rundown. Andy Murray winning Wimbledon grabs attention. The plane crash will continue to be big news as we hear from victims and ultimately the pilots who can answer what the hell happened.
For now it’s a miracle that almost 300 people walked away from a burning fuselage.
At this point, it seems like a very avoidable accident.
Life’s Crazy™