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No sign of life after crash
01/10/2006 08:57 - (SA)
Brasilia - Military searchers parachuted down on Saturday to the wreckage of a Brazilian passenger plane that crashed a day earlier in remote Amazon
jungle with 155 people on board.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said there was no sign
of survivors.
The brand-new Boeing 737-800 operated by Brazilian low-cost
carrier Gol probably plunged into the ground nose first after
it clipped a smaller executive jet, the head of Brazil's
airport authority Infraero said.
If the death toll is confirmed, it will be the worst
aviation accident in Brazil's history.
Dense forest
Brazil's military suspended the search and rescue mission
as dusk set in the thick forested area and will resume it
on Sunday morning.
"At night in the Amazon you can't see beyond a foot in
front of you," said Brigadier Antonio Gomes Leite Filho of
Brazil's air force at a news conference.
Earlier in the day, the two soldiers who rappelled from a
helicopter into the area were cutting down dense jungle to make
a helicopter landing area and authorities had recruited Indian
trackers to find a path to the remote jungle crash site for
relief teams.
"All rational logic shows there is a high probability that
a collision occurred," Infraero head Brigadier Jose Carlos
Pereira told reporters.
The small size of the wreckage area indicated that the
chances of survivors among the 149 passengers and six crew
members on board were slim.
Gol officials said there were 113 men and 42 women on
board, including an 11-month-old boy and four children. The
airline said there were only about half a dozen foreigners on
the flight, though the company didn't disclose their
nationalities.
Distraught families
Friends and relatives, many wearing dark sunglasses and
hugging and crying, gathered on the patio of a hotel in
Brasilia waiting for details. Most could not utter more than
one word before bursting into tears.
"Gol ... would not say if there might be any survivors,"
Robson Barreto said as he waited for news on his 29-year-old
nephew Rafael who was a passenger.
Smaller jet landed safely
Denise Abreu, director of civil aviation authority ANAC,
said signs indicated there had been a mid-air collision with a
smaller jet, which landed safely.
Embraer aircraft manufacturer said one of its executive
jets, a Legacy 600 owned and operated by a client, had been
involved in a collision and made an emergency landing at
Cachimbo air force base with five passengers on board. No
injuries were reported.
The Gol plane had been received new from Boeing on September 12
and had only 234 flight hours, the company said.
- Reuters
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