THE TEENAGE girl who is the only known survivor of the Comoros plane crash that killed up to 152 people has described how she floated in the Indian Ocean clutching a piece of debris for 12 hours before her rescue.
Bahia Bakari, who sustained just a fractured collarbone and cuts and bruises to her face, told her father how she was thrown clear of the Yemenia Airbus A310 when it crashed in poor weather at 2am on Tuesday. Her mother, who was travelling with her from Paris to visit relatives in the Comoros, is among those feared dead.
Kassim Bakari, the girl’s father, told French news outlets that he had spoken to his daughter on the telephone yesterday. “I asked her what happened and she said: ‘We saw the plane fall in the water. I found myself in the water. I was hearing people speak but I couldn’t see anyone. I was in the dark. I couldn’t see anything. Daddy, I couldn’t swim very well. I grabbed on to something but I don’t know what’.”
Mr Bakari, who has three other children, said that when he heard about the crash he thought he would never again see his wife and oldest daughter. “She is a very, very shy girl. I would never have thought she would have survived like this. I can’t say that it’s a miracle, I can say that it is God’s will,” he said.
He said his daughter had not yet been told that her mother was dead. “They told her she was in a room next door, so as not to traumatise her. But it’s not true. I don’t know who is going to tell her.”
Rescue workers who spotted Bahia in rough seas about nine miles off the Comoros coast on Tuesday afternoon said she was too weak to grab a lifebuoy thrown towards her.
One of the rescuers dived in and pulled her aboard the boat, where she was wrapped in blankets and given warm sugared water to drink while being taken to hospital.
Alain Joyandet, the French co-operation secretary, who visited Bahia in the Comoran capital, Moroni, yesterday, said that she had shown “incredible physical and moral strength”, and was due to be flown home to France as early as last night. “She is physically out of danger, she is evidently very traumatised,” he said.
The Aviation Safety Network website said that the Yemenia accident was the second deadliest plane crash ever in which only one person had survived. A four-year-old girl was the sole survivor when a Northwest Airlines plane crashed in Detroit in 1987, killing 156 people.
The Yemenia plane was on the last leg of a journey from France to the former French colony off Africa’s southeastern coast. With winds howling, the plane twice tried to land at the airport in Moroni on Tuesday before crashing in deep waters off Grand Comore, the largest of the country’s three islands.
Among the 142 passengers were 66 people from France, many of them with dual nationality. The other passengers and crew were from the Comoros, Canada, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Morocco, Yemen, the Philippines and the Palestinian territories. French and US aircraft along with numerous boats and navy divers are assisting local crews in the search for survivors.
Reports that one of the plane’s black boxes had been located were false, French officials said last night. Information from the flight recorders could be crucial in determining the cause, amid much speculation over the condition of the 19-year-old plane.
Passengers who had started the journey in France were transferred from a more modern Airbus A330 to the A310 during a stopover in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital. The doomed plane had been specifically banned from operating in France following an inspection in 2007 that identified numerous faults. The EU was also closely monitoring Yemenia over safety concerns, although the airline has not had any fatal accidents since being established under its current name in 1978.
The crash has caused widespread anger among the 200,000 immigrant Comorans living in France, some of whom have complained of overcrowding and a lack of seatbelts on Yemenia flights, particularly on the legs outside European airspace. A protest by Comoran youths in Paris yesterday delayed the departure of a Yemenia flight to Sana’a, and only 60 of the scheduled 160 passengers boarded the plane.
Yemenia said the crashed plane had passed a safety inspection in May. The airline said it would make initial payments of €20,000 to the families for each of the victims. – (Guardian service)