death

"The crash, described as Poland's worst commercial airline disaster, left several close-knit Polish communities in the New York area - in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn and in parts of Connecticut and New Jersey - in a state of shock and mourning."

"The Polish report into the crash found the shaft bearing in the engine had been installed with half the required number of roller bearings—13 instead of 26. Its failure caused the inner part of the disc to melt and the outer part to spin freely, destroying itself and becoming a rotary projectile. LOT never bought another Soviet aircraft and took delivery of its first Boeing 767 in 1990. Meanwhile, it fitted its Ilyushin 62M fleet with vibration gauges and warning lights."

"The crew faced fire and loss of thrust in the two left-side engines, cabin decompression and, they soon realised, loss of pitch control. For the remainder of the flight they controlled pitch with the aircraft’s trim system. The flight engineer opened the valves to jettison some of the 70 tonnes of fuel the aircraft was carrying for its trans-Atlantic flight, but was disturbed to see that although the solenoid read as open, the fuel level did not fall. At nearly maximum take-off weight but with only two engines operating, the aircraft was in a gradual, but unstoppable, descent."

"Among the crew’s terse, unemotional remarks was a brief speculation that something, possibly connected with the military area, had hit the horizontal stabiliser and engines. By this time the fire alarm had ceased and the crew presumed the fire had gone out. The engineer reported only one of the aircraft’s four generators was operational. In response, the captain switched off the radar to save power."

"Transcripts of cockpit voice recordings recovered from the wreckage show confusion in the cockpit, with crew members questioning one another repeatedly about the state of the instrument landing system and failing to follow procedures that would have kept them all aware of how close they were getting to the ground."

"Witnesses said the plane plowed through the jungle trailing smoke and flames, before it came to rest. The first rescuers had to make a maddeningly slow journey to the wreckage, trudging in with flashlights after hacking their way through razor-sharp grass that came up to their shoulders. They were followed by a bulldozer that slowly leveled a path over the rocky ground, the witnesses said."

"The cause of the crash was attributed to failure to adequately brief and execute a non-precision approach, and the Federal Aviation Administration's intentional inhibition of the minimum safe altitude warning system at Guam, the report showed."

"After the accident, Korean Air announced that it planned to spend more than $100 million over the next two years on safety initiatives, including changes in pilot training and maintenance operations."

"The television news later showed scenes filmed by a helicopter-borne Polish crew. Amid smoldering tree trunks and mangled metal, charred bodies could be seen, and bits of fabric hung from branches like shrouds, apparently blown there by the force of the explosion."

"Witnesses said the aircraft lost altitude rapidly, briefly skimmed treetops, then plowed a 500-yard furrow through the forest, breaking apart as it went. Its wings were sheared off, then it disintegrated in a huge explosion followed by a series of smaller explosions that touched off several brush fires."

"The wait for remains has been excruciating for the families of the victims, most of them South Korean. A scuffle broke out Thursday at a hotel used as a center for the families when mourners hungry for information saw a Korean Air representative hold a news conference for reporters instead of briefing the families."

"A woman who also witnessed the crash said she saw a body hanging from a tree after the explosion but rescue workers found little trace of human remains, apparently because of the force of the blast."

"It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books... It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: He made the books and he died."

"I will pass over my flirtation with journalism as a way of making a living, an idea I dropped when I discovered that in the fifties — unlike now — female journalists always ended up writing the obituaries and the ladies' page."

"Decency is not news; it is buried in the obituaries — but it is a force stronger than crime."

"It was one of several man-made disasters that set off public hand-wringing over the human cost of South Korea's breakneck economic growth and drew attention to the sometimes lethal effects of corruption."

"The collapse of the fashionable store was one in a series of disasters in South Korea that were attributed to inadequate construction or to corruption. Several Seoul city officials face bribery charges relating to the collapse."

"I scrolled on down to the obituaries. I usually read the obituaries first as there is always the happy chance that one of them will make my day."

"52 hours after the collapse, there was jubilation from the rescue workers and the families who had gathered around, as 24 people were pulled alive from the wreckage. They were all cleaners, who had been fortunate enough to be inside a basement dressing room which remained intact. However, they had little air and no food or water. Some of them drank their own urine to survive."

"Many of the casualties were women: sales clerks and housewives who had gone to the basement because the food department lowered prices on perishables in the late afternoon."

"Officials blamed the disaster on shoddy construction. Four executives of the shopping complex were arrested tonight on negligence charges. Police had said they knew the top floor was crumbling hours before the disaster but decided not to close and left without warning anyone."

"“Endless Disaster, Disaster, Disaster,” declared one local headline in the wake of the Sampoong collapse. Not only had the public caught on to that pattern, but the investigation of the Sampoong Group and the government officials with which they dealt threw light on a staggering depth and breadth of corruption. Worse still, the thoroughgoing inspection of Seoul’s by then proudly characteristic towers found that one out of seven needed rebuilding, four out of five needed major repairs, and just one in 50 could qualify as safe."

"Burned and scratched, some of the more fortunate survivors told of being hurled from the plane still attached to their seats, and of turning back in their escape from the burning jet to pull fellow passengers to safety."

"I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction."

"The investigation into the tragedy revealed that, in addition to the not well thought out fifth floor addition, the badly placed air conditioning units, and reducing the diameter and number of support columns, the collapse was a perfect storm of terrible engineering. Had the developers stuck to the original plans, the stucture would have been twice as strong as it needed to be. Given all of the errors, it was amazing that the structure had had stood for 6 years."

"The owner, Lee Joon, has been arrested and there are demands from relatives of missing family members that he be tried for murder. Five civil servants, including two high-ranking ones, have been arrested on bribery and corruption charges for having allowed Mr. Lee to operate the building even though it did not meet safety code standards."

"The Holy Father was very upset by the news of the accident. He was visibly upset and retired (to his private rooms) to say special prayers for the victims."

"I can feel a hole in my head so large my finger can go through it, that’s how big it is. And I can feel something squiggly in a cut in my back, like my intestine. I don’t want to die. As I look around I think it’s just a wall that’s collapsed on me. I try calling out but there’s no answer. I think it’s just me who’s stuck here."

"From across the store there was a sound like a subway train entering a station, and when we heard that sound people started running here and there. Suddenly a piece of concrete dropped on my head and I was knocked unconscious. After I awakened I was completely surrounded by darkness and all sides around me were closed in. There wasn’t any room. I cried for help and banged on the steel pipe beside me, but they couldn’t hear me from outside."

"In his prime, the young comic walked onto a stage with the confidence of a man who owned it, and by the time he walked off, he did."

"Luciano Pavarotti, who has died aged 71 of pancreatic cancer, grew up in the 1940s listening to the previous golden generation of tenor stars on record and radio... His family were enthusiastically musical and, aged four, he was apparently standing on the kitchen table singing the Duke of Mantua's La donna é mobile from Rigoletto as a party trick. He modelled himself on what he heard, and used recordings to take account of the competition, dead or alive, throughout his career. Nature equipped him with one of the most individual, unmistakable and beautiful voices there has been."

"Three decades ago, my Midwestern friend, Joe Rosenfield, then in his 80s, received an irritating letter from his local newspaper. In blunt words, the paper asked for biographical data it planned to use in Joe’s obituary. Joe didn’t respond. So? A month later, he got a second letter from the paper, this one labeled “URGENT.”"

"Those who ran the American government did not want to learn that the Soviets had been honestly confused and panic-stricken about the enemy intruder."

"The sophisticated provocation masterminded by the US special services with the use of a South Korean plane is an example of extreme adventurism in politics."

"We have found new material on KAL 007. I know that sixty percent of the passengers were American. I am prepared to give you all the materials we have found. Perhaps one possibility is if some family members could come over and meet with me and discuss this. They could bring the materials back to you, including the black box."

"Within hours, story began circulating in Washington that the Soviets have been involved."

"I would have landed him on our airfield, and I wanted it very much. Do you think I wanted to kill him? I would rather have shared a bottle with him."

"I was just next to him, on the same altitude, 150 meters to 200 meters away. I saw two rows of windows and knew that this was a Boeing. I knew this was a civilian plane. But for me this meant nothing. It is easy to turn a civilian type of plane into one for military use."

"Until we know what final explanation [the Soviets] give and we have made a judgment on that explanation, it is premature to say what we are going to do about it."

"The recollections bring back some unpleasant feelings. Those events left scars and added some gray hairs to my head. I will always be convinced that I gave the right order. Sometimes, in strategic operations, we had to sacrifice battalions to save the army."

"The plane was over Soviet territory for about two hours, so it can hardly be assumed that this was an unplanned action. We should make it clear in our statements that this was a gross violation of international conventions. It is no use keeping quiet now, we must go on the offensive."

"We have been struggling for years to know what happened to our loved ones. Now we face the agonizing recognition that their death was neither painless nor instant."

"There have been many books written about KAL 007 in the West, but the only living eyewitnesses to this tragedy are in the Soviet Union. The world is interested in the facts of what happened. But for me, what is most important is that ordinary Soviet citizens are opening their lips after so many years of silence. By talking, we become normal people."

"I am far from thinking that the blame for this tragedy lies entirely on us. The passengers on board KAL 007 had become the hostages of two great powers colliding with each other. They were condemned to die."

"Question I asked myself when I heard of his death is “Why Loc, of all people?” It seemed so unfair. Why not some multiple murderer on death row or some drunken bum? Worst of all, why did he die the way he did? I could understand and handle the death of a friend from diseases, but for him to be shot down on an airliner hurts me to the bottom of my soul."

"Cold War international tensions rose to a peak in 1983, with the deployment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe exciting Soviet concern and anger, and the Soviets fearing attack under the cover of Able Archer, a NATO military exercise held from 2 to 11 November. Reagan going aloft in his command plane during the exercise worried the Soviets. Moreover, the unrepentant Soviet shooting down on 1 September 1983, over Soviet airspace, of Korean Airlines flight 007, suspected of espionage, increased tension. Two hundred and sixty-nine people, including an American congressman, were on the plane."

"The destruction of the airliner and its immediate aftermath reaffirmed the Soviet Union's and the United States' essential distrust of each other and ended any hope of an immediate solution to the expanding nuclear arms race. Late November 1983 saw the failure of the European peace campaign as the West German parliament voted to accept 108 medium-range Pershing II missiles for deployment and the Reagan administration immediately began shipping missile components. The Soviets, as expected, broke off the strategic arms reduction negotiations in Geneva, accusing Washington of "wrecking" the talks and describing the Germans as "nuclear maniacs.""

"What civilian? [It] has flown over Kamchatka! It [came] from the ocean without identification. I am giving the order to attack if it crosses the State border."

"The target is destroyed."

"There were no circumstances that can justify the unprecedented attack on an unarmed commercial aircraft."