Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Tenerife commemorates the Los Rodeos tragedy
Located on the center of the picture is Mesa Mota mountain, where yesterday, the monument in memory of all the victims of the accident was inaugurated.Yesterday, on the 30th Anniversary of the Tenerife Disaster on March 27th, 1977, Tenerife paid homage to the victims of the accident at Los Rodeos. Families of the those who died, as well as survivors of the tragedy and members of the island's authorities, celebrated a memorial service at the Auditorio de Tenerife. Karen Tafuri, who lost her mother, Jeanne Wilder, in the crash, spoke of her experience, in representation of victims from the United States. While, Jan Groenewoud, President of the Foundation for families of the victims, remembered the seven people - among them, both of his parents and two sisters - that he lost on that date.
La hija de una víctima de Los Rodeos: "La catástrofe nos ha unido y nos tendrá vinculados para siempre"
Tenerife conmemora la tragedia de Los Rodeos
The 583 victims now have their Stairway to Heaven
An emotional homage was paid to the 583 victims of the crash yesterday afternoon, when De Wenteltrap (Spiral Staircase) memorial was inaugurated on the Mesa Mota mountain in La Laguna, Tenerife, overlooking the airport and site of the disaster.
The various reports in the local press carry numerous photos from the day's events:
Las 583 víctimas del accidente de Los Rodeos ya tienen su escalera al cielo
Un acto de homenaje y esperanza une a familiares de víctimas de Los Rodeos
Penas compartidas en Los Rodeos
It was also revealed yesterday, that the Dutch artist, Rudi van de Wint, who designed the over 18 metres tall monument, sadly died shortly after completing it.
Air Traffic Controller speaks to the media for the first time
Fernando Azcúnaga, who was one of the three controllers on duty in the tower at Los Rodeos on that fateful day in 1977, has spoken to the media for the first time in these 30 years. Previously, he had refused to speak publicly, but finally conceded on the request of his wife. The full text of an interview appears (in Spanish) in La Opinión, where Azcúnaga talks of his frustration at not having been able to do anything.
Now 71 and retired in 2000, Azcúnaga is married and father of four children (one of whom died in a traffic accident). He now lives in Tegueste, in the north of Tenerife and runs a parquet flooring company. Although he considers himself a strong person, Azcúnaga tells how the disaster changed his character and how he felt very saddened. "It was not my fault, but I was implicated.", he says. The accident still moves him enormously and it is something he carries in his heart.
The insurance companies, he adds, harassed him a lot in the aftermath of the crash. "There were a load of insurance companies and the easiest for them would be to put the blame on the controller so that everything would be paid by the Spanish Government", he says. (In 1977, ATC was still handled by the military in Spain.)
He has also spoken out about the rumour, reported on various occasions and included in certain documentaries, that the controllers were listening to a football match on the radio. This, Azcúnaga considers absurd. For one thing, Air Traffic Controllers work with headphones on, secondly, there is the evidence that in none of the tapes is there any sound of a goal or anything of the like.
Fernando Azcúnaga Aaransay: "Fue muy frustrante no poder hacer nada"
Runway Safety Debated on Anniversary of Deadly Crash
Meanwhile yesterday, Robert Bragg, former Pan American World Airlines co-pilot, spoke to the National Transportation Safety Board Tuesday at a safety forum in Washington, D.C., to recall the moment when his 747 was taxiing at Los Rodeos Airport and a KLM jumbo jet came barreling down the runway for its takeoff.
Runway Safety Debated on Anniversary of Deadly Crash
Tenerife will certainly never forget this disaster. Yesterday alone, there were no less than two documentaries on the crash - with some gruesome footage I had not previously seen - shown on just one local TV station, TVCanaria, as well as news coverage of the memorial services in every news report and magazine program.
But I also understand that having all the information is one of the ways one can deal with this event and that many people are still looking for this information (more than 300 to this one page here yesterday, alone), therefore, here are some more items I have found in my recent searches and that may be of use of interest to you:
Documents from the Investigation
For those who read Spanish, Canarias24Horas are offering six PDF documents to download, which are all of the documents from the Spanish investigation into the accident, including; the analysis, diagrams, the investigators' conclusions, flight plans from both aircraft and the official meteorological report from 27 March 1977.
See the following report for downloads: 30 años después les mostramos los documentos de la investigación del accidente de Los Rodeos
Seconds From Disaster Crash of the Century
Three clips from National Geographic Channel's Seconds From Disaster series.
See also: Tenerife Disaster Part 1 and Tenerife Disaster Part 2
This episode in the series reenacts the Tenerife disaster that took place at 17:06 local time on March 27, 1977, when two Boeing 747 airliners collided at Los Rodeos Airport on the island of Tenerife, Canary Islands, killing 583 people.
Link to video for feed readers
NOVA: The Deadliest Plane Crash
This NOVA documentary covers the disaster on March 27, 1977, on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, when the two fully loaded 747 jumbo jets collided on a fogbound runway, killing 583 people in what is still the deadliest crash in aviation history.
More information on the feature can be found here and, you can read a transcript of the The Deadliest Plane Crash here.
Further related articles and links:
Frustration, fog and fire - how a terrorist bomb blast 100 kilometers away led to the greatest disaster in aviation history, taking the lives of 583 innocent people.
Bethene Miller Moore -- survived worst plane crash in history
History's worst aviation accident turned on twists of fate
'...What's he doing? He'll kill us all!' (Article from TIME, dated Monday, Apr. 11, 1977)
No Place for an Ego
Project-Tenerife.com
TenerifeCrash.com
Anecdote
Much has already been written about the entire chain of events and circumstances that added up to allow this accident to happen, any one of which, if it hadn't occurred might have helped to prevent it from doing so ... If only it hadn't been foggy, if only there had been lights on the runway, ground radar (which Los Rodeos does now have), if only there hadn't been a terrorist bomb in Gran Canaria ...
One could go back to "if only the Wright Brothers hadn't discovered flight."
Nevertheless, there is one further piece of anecdotal information that I found at the foot of this article about the crash. I have no point of reference to be able to confirm this information, but it is certainly ironic, if not a bit creepy, if it is indeed fact and, while it sounds like the kind of story that the English might tell about "Spanish builders", the thing is, I have only ever read this report in Spanish, it says:
During the Second World War, Hitler insisted to Franco's regime on the construction of an aerodrome in Tenerife to give cover for his troops in North Africa. German technicians were sent to initiate studies for the design of the airport, which were later presented to the Spanish authorities. These latter decided to postpone the construction, but they held onto the plans made by the Germans, who in those days were considered as the experts in airport design and construction.
Some years later, after the end of the war, the Spanish authorities decided that it was time to construct the airport in Tenerife, for which they decided to resort to the valuable documents provided by the Germans. Amongst these was a map of the area, on which was clearly marked a great big red cross. The Spanish "supposed" that this marked the ideal location for the airport and, commenced its construction based on the German maps. What they did not know, is that the big red cross indicated the area where an airport should never be built.
Labels: Tenerife Disaster
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2 Comments:
Pamela Heywood wrote (on
October 08, 2007)
At the link given in the paragraph above it, where it says that the information can be found at the foot of the article linked to.
I also clearly say that it is anecdotal and that is the only reference, i.e. that I have not conformed it elsewhere.
During the Second World War, Hitler insisted to Franco's regime on the construction of an aerodrome in Tenerife to give cover for his troops in North Africa. German technicians were sent to initiate studies for the design of the airport, which were later presented to the Spanish authorities. These latter decided to postpone the construction, but they held onto the plans made by the Germans, who in those days were considered as the experts in airport design and construction.
Some years later, after the end of the war, the Spanish authorities decided that it was time to construct the airport in Tenerife, for which they decided to resort to the valuable documents provided by the Germans. Amongst these was a map of the area, on which was clearly marked a great big red cross. The Spanish "supposed" that this marked the ideal location for the airport and, commenced its construction based on the German maps. What they did not know, is that the big red cross indicated the area where an airport should never be built.
this is all very interesting but where is your reference to your source of this information._