The
flames appeared to be running up the hill at a great speed. From the small town
below, the fire seemed to conquer the mountain with ease. The smoke started to
descend shortly and only minutes after the incident, the whole valley was
choking on thick and toxic smoke. People got out of the streets and got in
their homes, sealing every single window and door in order not to let the smoke
inside. They kept the blinds up however, as it was important to know if the
fire in the mountain continued or if someone attempted to stop it.
Sure enough, a larger city located close by,
had decided to send a fire brigade to extinguish the fire. But they weren’t
only there for that: they were also sent on a rescue mission. After all, the
fire had not been caused by some glass in the woods (it was nighttime) or a
badly taken care of bonfire. The flames had appeared out of the impact of a
plane against the side of the mountain. Only a couple of people from the nearby
town had seen it actually crash but they wouldn’t have to know how big the
aircraft was or why it had crashed.
The city’s firemen battled against the flames
for several hours. The fire that had grown around the wreckage was so violent
that it had consumed a good part of the forest in its first hour. As the firemen
took their time to kill the fire, dawn came and it was thanks to the first
lights of the day that the fire could finally be beaten. They got to the
wreckage and discovered it was one of those private jets. It probably carried
around twenty people or something like that but it would be irresponsible to
say before getting the black box or any additional information.
The people of the small town were grateful
that the fire had been beaten, so they decided to help the firemen with the
search for the black box. They divided themselves into teams, each team having
a specific area of the forest to go and look for the box. The awful thing was
that, as they looked for that, they found some other things that they weren’t
prepared to see. Severed heads, burned limbs and even the corpses of a couple
of children. It was very shocking for everyone to see that, as their own
children were not very far away.
A farmer that lived by the mountain finally
found the box. He was very thankful that the fire didn’t get to his food, so he
rushed up the hill when he heard they might need help. He actually found the
black box when walking towards the wreckage, closer to his house than to the
remains of the plane. It seemed like something important, so he grabbed it and
showed it to the chief of the firemen. He was very happy to see the box and
thanked the man. It was a very happy moment in a very awkward moment to feel
something like that.
As the box was sent to the city, the firemen
and people of the small town had decided to help carry the dead downhill and
then to several ambulances that came and went every so often. They all counted
the bodies and, when they didn’t find anyone else, they concluded there were
actually thirty-seven people in the plane. It was a very strange number; as
such a plane was not really suited for that many people. Even the people of the
town knew that or at least they thought it was very strange. The last thing
they did was waiting for the experts.
Those people were the ones that were in charge
of taking all the pictures for the report that would have to be filed in order
to investigate the reasons of the crash. The experts had taken their time
arriving because they had to travel from the capital to actually get there, so
many of the objects and the general wreckage site was not exactly as it had
been before they started looking for the box and picking up the bodies. A young
fireman was bright enough to take pictures the moment they had arrived so he
surrendered those images to the experts.
After
the experts were done picking up all the pieces, big and small, as well as
sweeping what remained of the forest to look for every single piece of
evidence, the site became some sort of graveyard. It was very particular
because there were no remains there but no one really knew if, maybe, some more
passengers had been burned by the fire that had consumed the forest. They had
no idea if that was possible so the people of the small town organized a mass
one-week after the accident. Some of the firemen attended, it was a beautiful
ceremony.
Meanwhile, the experts analyzed every single
fragment of the plane and determined that the model that had crashed had
seating for twenty-six people. That meant that, according to the amount of
bodies people had rescued from the mountain, at least eleven people had not
been seating on a proper seat but somewhere else. That was not really the usual
and it didn’t happen very often. The experts also tired to determine if the
extra passengers could have been a reason for the crash but everything seem to
point that it hadn’t been a critical factor.
The remains of the planes and of the people
were thoroughly checked and, two weeks after the crash, the experts released a
statement in which they announced that the final number of dead in the crash
had been forty-one and not thirty seven as the firemen and townsfolk had
counted. Apparently, the remaining four that hadn’t been counted had caught on
fire shortly after the crash and now their remains had almost combined with
some of the other passenger’s remains.
It was only thanks to the black box that they
could determine who the passengers were and what flight that was. After all,
the nearest control tower had declared that no aircraft had been detected in
the area before the crash. That meant that they wouldn’t have had any contact
with it and it would also have been impossible to know it had crashed. Other
airfields were consulted and they all said the same thing. The first theory was
that it was some sort of drug related flight, maybe operated by criminals
wanting to get away from the country.
That theory was soon debunked, as the closest
border was almost two thousand kilometers always. Besides, the black box was
able to tell the experts that the flight happened to be a private one.
Furthermore, the codes inside it were able to point the origin of the flight,
almost a thousand kilometers away. The aircraft had apparently left an airfield
not so far from the capital city. It looked like they had boarded in a rush, in
fear if that was possible. The voices of the crew on the recordings were very
difficult to tell one from the other.
It was rather easy to say that the plane was
really crowded because a lot more voices could be heard in the background. The
audios were checked several time in order to identify what everyone was saying
during the flight. It was hard work because many voice chimed into the
conversation happening inside the aircraft and it seemed as if they had been
talking every single second until their death. Apparently the instruments had begun
to fail and that could be the cause behind the crash.
But even if that was the reason, it didn’t
answer much about why all of those people had decided to get into a crowded
airplane. As the voice experts analyzed the audios, others decided to have a
second look at the object that had been rescued from the plane. There were
toys, glasses, a briefcase, magazines, and a couple of computers… Everything
except suitcases, actual luggage that the people inside the plane should have
carried. It was kind of obvious that they had boarded on a rush. The origin
airport was consulted on that and it was then when they had an extra clue.
The manager of the airfield had a report of a
disappeared business jet owned by a pharmaceutical company. It had been there
for several months and now the people had left. No one really knew when but the
fact that a company owned it raised some eyebrows. But that didn’t explain the
amount of people that were inside. It took another week to have one more clue,
when a clumsy investigator dropped the suitcase found on the plane, making it
open and revealing a series of papers and a very bright substance in a titanium
tank, the size of a forearm. The mystery was not done.
