Wednesday, August 25, 1999
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 9
Nation/World
Fire ignites aboard plane
The Associated Press
TAIPEI, Taiwan— An explosion sparked a raging fire aboard a Taiwanese jet on Tuesday. Twenty-eight people were injured in the second disaster to strike a Taiwanese passenger plane in several days.
The fiery landing of the UNI Airlines MD-90 followed a China Airlines crash-landing Sunday in Hong Kong. In both cases, the planes were manufactured by McDonnell Douglas Corp.
The plane in yesterday's incident caught fire on the runway in east-central Taiwan's Hualien Airport, 110 miles southeast of Taipei. As the jet touched down, there was a loud noise from the front of the cabin, and thick black smoke poured out from one of the overhead luggage compartments, according to the airline's vice president, Si Chung-ching.
Of the 96 people aboard,28 were hospitalized,including a man and woman who suffered severe burns.
Black smoke churned out of a gap.
ing hole on the right side of the plane's fuselage, while aircraft insulation and charred luggage littered the runway. Passengers were evacuated swiftly from the jet, but it took firefighters more than half an hour to douse the flames.
Authorities were not sure what caused the explosion and said they could not rule out a bomb. Police opened a criminal investigation to go along with an already-launched safety probe.
The plane had carried 90 passengers and six crew, all of them Taiwanese, on a 25-minute flight from the capital, Taipei.
Meanwhile, a Taiwanese regulator said faulty information may have played a role in Sunday's crash landing, when a China Airlines MD-11 jetliner out of Bangkok brushed a wing on the runway, burst into flames and flipped over. Two people died and 211 were injured.
Chang Kuo-cheng, the deputy director general of Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration, said the pilot tried to land in stormy
cross winds that exceeded his safety threshold after getting faulty information from his co-pilot.
The co-pilot told the pilot that the winds were blowing at 26 mph when they were actually 30 mph, Chang said.
Hong Kong investigators who recovered the black box cockpit recorder from the wreckage on Tuesday would not discuss the issue.
Of the injured, 48 people were still in the hospital Monday afternoon, including one person in critical condition and three in serious condition, a Hong Kong government spokeswoman said.
Representatives from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, aircraft manufacturer Boeing Co. and jet engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney arrived in Hong Kong on Tuesday to help the Hong Kong and Taiwanese investigators.
Seattle-based Boeing was there because it has purchased McDonnell-Douglas, the plane's manufacturer.
The Associated Press
Bombing still haunts victims
OKLAHOMA CITY—A study of survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing found that nearly half developed post-traumatic stress disorder or had other psychiatric illnesses, such as depression or problems with drugs and alcohol.
Forty-five percent of those studied were found to suffer illnesses that included chronic depression
The study, published in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at 182 adults who were inside or just outside the federal building when the bomb went off in 1995, killing 168 people and injuring nearly 700. The survivors were interviewed six months after the blast.
The researchers said that they were surprised by the degree of suffering and that they hope the results help mental health professionals focus their efforts after disasters.
and drug and alcohol problems.
The biggest single group of survivors — one out of three — had post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition often seen in Vietnam veterans. Its symptoms include flashbacks, angry outbursts and sleep and concentration problems.
Bombing survivors have described nightmares, a fear of entering tall buildings, loss of trust and flashbacks triggered by loud noises.
The study was conducted by researchers at Washington University, the Oklahoma State Department of Health and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences.
"I can still smell the smoke," said Martin Cash, a former benefits counselor with the Veterans Administration who lost an eye in the bombing. Once, when his wife was moving furniture at their home, she bumped the wall.
"That big, thud, I came unglued," he said.
Fifty-five percent of those studied only counseling, not psychiatric care, said Carol North, a psychiatrist at Washington University's School of Medicine in St. Louis and one of the study's authors.
"Nobody was untouched by this disaster, but different people were touched differently," she said. "Human distress is understandable after horrendous events such as this. We should not necessarily equate that with mental illness."
Those with more serious injuries were more prone to develop a disorder, as were those who had a family member seriously injured or killed. Survivors most at risk were those who refused to think about the event and had feelings of isolation and loss of interest in their surroundings.
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