Shock for people waiting for news as TV shows dead body
Print Edition
RELATIVES of passengers on AirAsia flight QZ8501 began crying hysterically and some others fainted after Indonesian television aired footage showing a body floating in the sea during aerial searches for the plane.
At least two distraught family members had to be carried out on stretchers from the room where they had been waiting for news in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city and the take-off point for the aircraft that had disappeared during a storm on Sunday morning.
“My heart will be totally crushed if it’s true. I will lose a son,” 60-year-old Dwijanto told reporters.
More than 48 hours after the Airbus A320-200 lost contact carrying 162 people to Singapore, aerial searchers spotted items in the Java Sea which officials said were from the plane. Soon after they began recovering of bodies.
As the first body was shown floating in the water on rolling television news, relatives burst into tears and hugged one another amid cries for more ambulances, a reporter at the scene said.
One man covered his face and had to be held up by two other men before he collapsed and was taken out on a stretcher.
Another woman was screaming and crying as she was supported by the mayor of Surabaya.
A female AirAsia officer shouted at the television media for showing footage of a floating body, while about 200 journalists were barred from the room holding the families, the windows of which were boarded up.
“Is it possible for you not to show a picture of the dead? Please do not show a picture of a dead body,” the officer shouted. “That’s crazy.”
Munif, a 50-year-old man whose younger brother Siti Rahmah was one of the passengers on the missing plane, said that he had been trying his best to keep the other families calm.
“But the atmosphere was very different after the footage of a dead body was shown. Families became hysterical,” he said.
“Because everyone was wailing and yelling, I couldn’t deal with it so I decided to leave the room.”
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