I'm sitting here in a restaurant at Toronto airport mouching off some free wifi from the executive lounge when people start rushing by my table to look at the TV. I don't normally pay attention to TVs at airports but this time I look. And then I look again... a plane has crashed at Toronto airport. I look over my shoulder... Its a plane on fire.
A few seconds of sanity check - my family who I just waved goodbye to on their trip back to London aren't flying for another hour or so which means they must be safe. Breath...
Firetrucks are arriving now as the big black cloud starts spreading. The TV continues to blare and people stare. Pilots and other flight crew start appearing looking anxious. I can't imagine how they feel, its something anyone wants to hear about, let alone see.
The cloud is getting bigger and spreads down the runway covering buildings and the foreground. Still no news if anyone is injured but the TV says 200 on board and the plane is an Air France 737 flight 358 that crashed on landing.
I phone my girlfriend and let her know its not my family on board, this will be all over the news any minute now. Then I phone my brother who is waiting to leave but I can't reach him so I leave a message. What are you supposed to say? The have a safe trip I wished them all an hour ago probably rings hollow now, but I repeat it anyway. Try to put it out of your minds I say, everything will be okay.
The plane is engulfed in a huge white cloud now, lots of water is being sprayed onto it and the cloud is rolling towards the terminal. Ambulances are roaring by. A big crowd of people in departures is calmly watching the TV and a rumour starts that the airport is being shut down.
I take out my camera and take a photo. I feel kind of guilty but also feel like I have some weird right to take it. It could easily have been my folks on that plane. Does that give me a right to take a photo? What if it had been my folks on that plane... I guess I wouldn't have taken it. But a hundred journalists would have taken it, no second thought.
A waitress brings drinks to the table next to me and mentions that six people have been rescued and I silently contemplate what that probably means.
I think I'll stop now and try to call my brother again. I want to wish him and the rest of my family a safe flight agian...
1 comment:
I guess you could call it a miracle - or just good luck - but everyone got out alive. The stories of people walking out onto the freeway and getting rides back to the airport before emergency services had arrived was freaky. My folks eventually got away back to the UK before midnight. Domestic travellers were not so fortunate - my cousin who was flying in from Winnipeg is delayed by two days.
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