Europe: A Grisly Triptych of Disasters

Accidents in Spain, Germany and Switzerland

In a world that has become sadly accustomed to the violent images of war, there was still room for shock last week at the carnage of civilian calamities. Americans and Europeans alike were stunned by three unrelated accidents that killed 135 people and injured 67.

The deadliest of the mishaps occurred as a chartered Spanish DC-10, fully laden with 380 tourists bound for New York, was racing down the runway of the airport near the seaside resort of Málaga. As the aircraft approached the necessary takeoff speed of more than 180 m.p.h., the plane began to vibrate severely. Pilot Juan Pérez apparently responded by slamming on the brakes, although at that point there is usually neither enough time nor enough room to bring a plane to a safe halt on the runway. Lighting panels dropped from the roof of the cabin, and hundreds of souvenirs spilled from overhead baggage compartments. Passenger Carlton Maloney, 30, an audiovisual specialist at Manhattan’s Pace University who was tape-recording the sound of the takeoff, cried into his microphone: “We are in trouble!”

Instants later, the jet smashed through a fence at the end of the runway. It crossed a busy highway, hit a truck and two cars, rammed into a shed and finally came to rest in a stubble field. Awash in jet fuel, the aircraft quickly caught fire. Said Irving Blatt, a professor at Rutgers University, who was sitting across from one of the stewardesses: “I saw the horror on her face as she looked at the back of the plane. When I turned, I saw the smoke and flames—at first outside and then almost immediately in the cabin.”

While some passengers took pains to collect their baggage, others jumped the aisles, making their way to the yellow fire-resistant chutes that unfurled outside the emergency exits. Just before sliding down to safety, Stanley Miller of Rego Park, N.Y., turned to look back; his left cheek, ear and arm were seared by flames. Said he: “I shall never forget the screaming, never.” Miraculously, most of those aboard, including the pilot and ten crew members, managed to get out of the plane. But 50, most of them seated in the rear of the plane, died in the inferno, and 15 others were listed in serious condition. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, assisting Spanish and McDonnell Douglas experts, thought the vibrations may have come from one or more blown tires. Another possibility: a failure in one of the DC-10’s high-pressure, high-velocity turbofan engines. At week’s end no one was venturing a definitive verdict.

Two days earlier, a “fun festival” in the West German city of Mannheim had also turned into a kind of aerial hell. One of the festivities scheduled for the city’s 375th anniversary celebration was an air show highlighted by a free-fall parachute jump involving 39 German, British, U.S. and French skydivers, four of them women. The jump never took place. Instead, horrified onlookers saw the U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter that was practicing for the event suddenly lose a blade from one of its twin rotors, then plunge 1,200 ft. onto the dividing rail of a nearby autobahn. All the parachutists died, along with five helicopter crewmen and two American Forces news staffers. All U.S. Army Chinooks were grounded for a “precautionary period” while investigators probed the accident, a process that might take two weeks.

Only 65 miles away, residents of the village of Schönaich mourned the victims of another weekend tragedy. Forty members of a Schönaich sports club were on a bus returning from a weekend excursion when, inexplicably, the woman in charge of lowering the gates at a level crossing near the Swiss town of Fehraltdorf failed to do so as a three-car regional train approached. The train hit the middle of the bus, killing 38 passengers and the bus driver. It was the worst railway accident in Switzerland since 1891.