At the core site of the crash of the MU5735 passenger plane of China Eastern Airlines, search and rescue personnel on the mountainside wore safety ropes around their waists to search. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Lu Bo'an
We will wipe clean what is stained with mud; we will pick it up again when it is buried in the mud.
They are black bow hairbands, white plastic boxes painted with Doraemon motifs, Burnt French textbooks around them, broken slips of paper with "peace buckles" written on them, and password cards strung together. They were supposed to be a colorful life, and on March 21, they fell into the mountains with Flight MU5735.
The plane crashed into the mountain forest near the Shentang table in Moyuan Village, Wuzhou City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and the huge impact force turned it into a scorched black soil. We saw the mountains burning, we saw the rags of clothes broken, tied to the trees on both sides of the mountain, we saw a cement road more than ten meters away from the core site, and relatives in front of the altar were crying.
At this time, we must stand up and stand together. On March 26, the "3.21" China Eastern Airlines MU5735 aircraft flight accident National Emergency Response Command confirmed that all 123 passengers and 9 crew members on the flight had been killed. On the 27th, the search for the accident continued. Earlier, some people saw at the search and rescue scene that the protective clothing of the search and rescue personnel was written "never give up" and "go all out".
Yes, never give up, that should be our commitment to all the families of those killed. Those fragments of life, those cruel truths, no matter how deeply they are buried, we should find them. It is the support of the family to continue to live, and it is the cornerstone of our renewed faith.
To do this, search and rescue personnel have to walk through the slopes of the hill without roads. On steep slopes, they need knotted ropes to climb. Most of the wreckage of the aircraft was concentrated in the core area with a radius of about 30 meters around the main impact point, and the depth extended from the surface down to about 20 meters. However, the scope of the initial search was expanded to about 20,000 square meters. On March 23, it was 4.6 million square meters. The next day, it expanded by a factor of 1.5. On that day, a fragment of suspected aircraft wreckage was found by local people in farmland more than 10 kilometers from the core site.
In recent days, at the core site of the crash of the MU5735 passenger plane of China Eastern Airlines, search and rescue personnel from all over the country have silently endured the impact of the high humidity and high temperature environment and worked hard with their hands to carry out the search work. This is the hand of the search and rescue personnel. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Lu Bo'an
And the search is only the first step. The steps of aviation accident investigation are complex, and information collection, data analysis and simulation experiments are indispensable. The "black box" is the most critical evidence to find the cause of an aircraft accident. At present, two black boxes have been found, but due to damage, the specific decipherment time cannot be determined.
This means that the investigation report of the accident may need to wait a long time – the investigation report of the 2010 Yichun air disaster was released nearly two years later; the final investigation report of Malaysia Airlines MH370 waited for up to four years. To trace the roots in a complex system, it is necessary to wait. But that doesn't mean we're going to gradually leave this core scene.
We need to keep an eye on our families. A wife who lost her husband in the air crash said she wanted people to know that this group needed long-term, sustained attention and help. The pain faced by the families of the deceased cannot be cathartic by a momentary cry. They need to climb out of a dark abyss, and the emotion of longing will repeatedly scratch blood on them.
As the wife said, she needs to face her daughter who worries that her father will not have money to buy things in heaven, and she also needs to face the problem of what to pay for her credit card next month without her husband's identity information. The attention and help to them are not only from the huge "cheering" and hugging on the Internet, but also the long stream of water in daily life. They come from neighbors, from communities, and from the kind eyes of strangers.
On March 21, 2022, guangzhou Baiyun Airport, staff guided the families of passengers of FLIGHT MU5735 to assemble. Courtesy of Visual China
We also need to keep track of the cause of the accident. Accident investigations take time, but before we do, we can take a detailed look at this complex system. On the second day of the accident, the Civil Aviation Administration issued a notice requiring that a two-week industry safety inspection be carried out immediately on the basis of the previous industry safety supervision work. Careful inspection can eliminate a new danger in the blink of an eye, and such inspections should be carried out frequently. We should never forget the pain of an accident.
Now, the village of Moyuan is the focus of the eyes of the compatriots. Here, people show the greatest warmth and kindness. When the accident first occurred, wave after wave of rescue teams rushed to the mountain, and before the rescue team's lighting equipment was fully erected, the villagers here spontaneously brought lamps, flashlights and other luminous items from their homes to illuminate the dark road. People are helping their families in pain in various ways. The psychological assistance team was waiting there, and the family of Malaysia Airlines MH370 was also shouting to them online.
This is their sad moment, and it is also our sad moment. From here, let this mountain forest in Moyuan Village be the beginning of rebuilding confidence.
During the rescue, rescuers had two moments of silence during the day. Every day, they would observe a minute's silence for the victims of the accident before entering the search site; at the end of the daily search and rescue, they would bow deeply to the crash site. This is respect for people, respect for life. With this belief, we will be united. Life will go on, planes will take off and land.
Perhaps, respect for life can go further. In this mountain forest, can we leave a permanent memorial site - or a venue, or a stone monument? It gives the family a longing outlet, and it keeps our memories from being buried. Yin Ping, head of the psychological rescue expert group, said that the rescue team prepared a special clay pot for the families of the passengers, loaded with dirt from the crash site, and used this way to make the family members emotionally connect with their relatives. We should plant this dirt in the hearts of many people.
The heart of the crash was a depression between three small peaks. Local villagers said that originally this was a large orange grove, which had been planted with sugar oranges for 10 years. Today, 132 lives are forever with this mountain forest.
Flowers will grow in the soil, and let us start from this mountain forest, from this silt. Only by moving forward can we move towards a better life.
Source: China Youth Daily client