Accidents and Safety

Subterms

    Latest story

    100 Shares69 Views

    Chaos At Site of Air India Plane Crash

    by

    Firefighters raced to douse smoking buildings as emergency workers recovered bodies after a deadly passenger plane crash in India.Dozens of medical school students in the western Indian state of Gujarat were eating lunch on Thursday when an Air India passenger plane carrying 242 people to London crashed into their dining hall. In the aftermath of the disaster, the ripped tail of the wrecked plane could be seen jutting out of the building.At least five students died in the crash in the city of Ahmedabad, said Minakshi Parikh, the dean of B.J. Medical College, whose campus is near the end of the runway of the airport. Officials feared that the death toll at the medical campus and its neighboring buildings could be higher.“Most of the students escaped, but 10 or 12 were trapped in the fire,” Ms. Parikh said.At least 204 people were killed in the crash of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, G.S. Malik, the police commissioner of Ahmedabad, said in an interview. That makes the crash India’s deadliest aviation disaster since 1996.Verified video shows the plane descending, almost as if on a glide, and then a fireball rises in its place. Photos and verified videos from the crash site show widespread carnage as well as medical workers carrying the bodies of victims into ambulances on stretchers.Dr. Bharat Ahir, who reached the scene soon after the crash, said he had seen rescuers bringing people out of thick smoke. Inside the damaged dinning hall, he said, the meals of many of the students sat unfinished.Dt. Ahir said he feared that casualties in a nearby residential complex, a multistory block where doctors and their families live, could outnumber those at the dinning facility.“The plane’s back part is stuck in the dinning hall, and the front hit the residential building,” he said.Wreckage from the plane at the site of the crash. Amit Dave/ReutersImages emerging from the scene show the blackened tangle of the wreckage of the plane. The aircraft appeared to have broken into large pieces, with one wing lying on a roadway. Firefighters could be seen spraying burned-out buildings and sooty, cracked trees as they stepped carefully around the hunks of debris.At a nearby hospital, medical workers raced through busy rooms with empty stretchers and wheelchairs, verified video showed. Crowds of people milled about.Outside, a group of men walked through the streets with a stretcher carrying an injured person. Ambulance after ambulance drove by.Mujib Mashal More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares152 Views

      in Elections

      Brooklyn Roof Collapse Kills Worker at Construction Site That Lacked Permits

      by

      The worker, a 43-year-old man, was trapped under the fallen roof in an extension behind a former restaurant in Brooklyn, the Buildings Department said.A construction worker died in Brooklyn on Thursday after a roof collapsed at the site of a former steakhouse where demolition work was being conducted without the required permits, according to the New York City Department of Buildings.Around 8:50 a.m., someone at the scene called 9-1-1 about a partial building collapse, the police said. Emergency medical workers found a 43-year-old man trapped under the fallen roof, unconscious. He was in critical condition when he was taken to Brookdale Hospital, where he later died, the police said. The worker’s name had not been released Thursday evening pending notification of his family.The work site was at the corner of Quentin Road and East 33rd Street in Brooklyn’s Marine Park neighborhood. A two-story structure there once housed a restaurant called T Fusion Steakhouse, which has closed. The structural failure happened in a concrete extension behind the building, which had been used for storage, according to the Buildings Department, which is investigating the incident.Workers had been demolishing a walk-in freezer and commercial kitchen, the department said, but no permits for the work had been filed with the city. Utility service to the building was shut off after the collapse, and inspectors with the Buildings Department ordered that the building be vacated and all work ceased.The Buildings Department posted a vacate order and a stop-work order on the building.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesThe Fire Department has requested an inspection to determine the building’s structural stability, according to public records.The building was bought in 2020 for $1.1 million by LA3223 LLC, which is owned by Larry Leiby Ackerman, according to property records. Since then, the only complaint on file with the Buildings Department about the site before Thursday was one filed last April, warning that balcony doors on the second floor of the vacant building were open to birds and trespassers, and that the backyard was full of garbage.The problems were resolved before inspectors arrived, according to department records, and the complaint was closed. A person who answered the phone at a number listed for Mr. Ackerman hung up when reached on Thursday evening.Alain Delaquérière More

    • 113 Shares128 Views

      in Elections

      Landslide at Quarry in Indonesia Kills at Least 10

      by

      Officials halted rescue operations on Friday evening after poor lighting and the possibility of more landslides put rescue workers at risk.At least 10 people have been killed in a landslide at a quarry mine in West Java, Indonesia, according to the country’s national disaster management agency.The landslide occurred around 10 a.m. on Friday near the city of Cirebon, which is about 135 miles east of Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital. All of those killed were quarry workers, according to the agency. Six others were injured and being treated at local hospitals.A news network, Kompas TV, broadcast images of the aftermath, showing excavators digging through the rubble as officials searched for survivors at the base of a steep hill.The search for additional victims was halted around 5 p.m. because of darkness and the risk of more landslides, Mukhammad Yusron, the commander of the region’s military district, told the Antara news agency. He said search efforts would resume on Saturday.Bambang Tirto Mulyono, the head of the West Java department of energy and mineral resources, told Detik Jabar, a local news site, that the landslide was caused by improper mining methods — mining from the bottom of the hill up, instead of from the top down.“We have repeatedly warned the mining operator, even in strong terms,” he said, adding that the Cirebon city police had cordoned off the site since February “because the mining method used did not meet safety standards.”Indonesia is prone to landslides during seasonal rains that typically occur from October to April.Last month, 10 people were killed after a landslide hit vehicles on Java, the country’s main island, and 25 people were killed in another landslide there in January.Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,500 islands with a population of more than 280 million people, was once covered by vast rainforests. But many of those forests have been cut down in the last 50 years to make way for palm plantations and farmland.Deforestation and illegal small-scale gold mining operations have also contributed to unstable soil conditions in the country. In November, 24 people died at an unauthorized gold mining area on Sulawesi island after a landslide. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Mexican Ship in Fatal Crash Accelerated Before Hitting Brooklyn Bridge

      by

      As a federal investigation began, officials said the Cuauhtémoc backed into the bridge, killing two, less than five minutes after leaving a Manhattan pier.A Mexican naval ship in the East River accelerated suddenly in the wrong direction before slamming its masts into the Brooklyn Bridge in a crash that killed two crew members, federal transportation officials said on Monday.The ship, the Cuauhtémoc, was moving at a speed of about 2.3 knots after shoving off from a Lower Manhattan pier Saturday night with a tugboat’s help, Brian Young of the National Transportation Safety Board said at a news conference.The 300-foot-long ship, which had 277 people on board, maintained that pace for “a bit of time” before “the speed began to increase,” said Mr. Young, the investigator leading the safety board’s inquiry into the crash. The Cuauhtémoc’s speed had risen to six knots when it hit the bridge less than five minutes after leaving shore, he said.It was unclear what caused the sudden acceleration, Mr. Young said. But it will be among the issues investigators focus on in the course of an examination that is in its earliest stages and that could take up to two years to complete.“This is a start of a long process,” Michael Graham, an N.T.S.B. board member, said at the news conference, noting that the agency expected to issue a preliminary report of its findings within 30 days. “We will not be drawing any conclusions. We will not speculate.”Mr. Graham said agency officials were working with their Mexican counterparts to gain access to the ship so that investigators could inspect the engine, interview crew members still on board and recover any data recorders the vessel may have. The damaged vessel is now docked at Pier 36 in Manhattan.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      In Deadly Ship Crash, Questions About What Went Wrong

      by

      A day after a Mexican sailing vessel slammed its masts into the underside of the Brooklyn Bridge, new details about the deadly crash began to emerge.But as the hobbled, 300-foot long ship, the Cuauhtémoc, remained docked at Pier 36 in Manhattan on Sunday, a clear understanding of what went awry in the accident that killed two crew members remained elusive.“To put it mildly, after being fully briefed on last night’s Brooklyn Bridge accident, one thing is very clear: There are many more questions than answers as to how the accident occurred and whether it could have been prevented,” Senator Chuck Schumer said during a news conference on Sunday.As the National Transportation Safety Board and Mexican officials began a full investigation into the crash, those questions included what the “mechanical issues” were that authorities said caused the Cuauhtémoc to veer wildly off its course and into the bridge, and what role a tugboat seen in videos and photographs of the incident on Saturday night played in the accident.The two victims of the crash were identified on Sunday by Mexican officials. América Yamileth Sánchez Hernández, 20, from the state of Veracruz, was named in a social media post by the state’s governor, Rocío Nahle, who sent condolences to her family.“Veracruz is with you,” Ms. Nahle wrote.The second victim was Adal Jair Maldonado Marcos, 23, according to Raúl Rangel González, the mayor of San Mateo del Mar, a coastal town in Oaxaca state where Mr. Maldonado Marcos was from.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Mexican Navy Sailboat Crashes Into Brooklyn Bridge

      by

      There were 277 people on board, and three were critically injured, officials said.The masts of a Mexican Navy training sailboat toppled after striking the underside of the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday evening.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesA Mexican Navy training sailboat with nearly 300 people on board struck the underside of the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday night, the New York Police Department said.There were 277 people on board, a Fire Department official said. Among those injured, three were deemed to be in critical condition and another 17 were serious. Everyone on board the ship is believed to be accounted for, the official said. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      3 Climbers Die After Falling in North Cascades in Washington State

      by

      A fourth climber was seriously injured in what the authorities called a hiking accident in the mountain range.Three rock climbers were killed over the weekend and another was seriously injured when they fell nearly 200 feet while descending a steep gully in the North Cascades mountains in Washington State, the authorities said.The four men, whose names have not been released, were rappelling down a sheer rock face near the North Early Winters Spire when they fell. It was unclear what caused the accident, though the authorities believe it may have been the result of an equipment failure, said Undersheriff David Yarnell of the Okanogan County Sheriff Office.The climbers who were killed, ages 36, 47 and 63, were declared dead at the scene, the sheriff’s office said in a statement. The fourth climber, whose age was unavailable, was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Undersheriff Yarnell said. His condition was not immediately available on Monday.It was not clear how the men knew one another. The Okanogan County Coroner’s Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.About 11:30 a.m. Sunday, emergency workers with the sheriff’s office and volunteers with the Okanogan County Search and Rescue Association responded to a report of a climbing accident near North Early Winters Spire off State Route 20, approximately 16 miles west of Mazama, Wash., the sheriff’s office said in a statement.It was unclear when the men had started their climb and when they fell. The weather began to turn during their ascent, and the group decided to head back, Undersheriff Yarnell said. As the climbers descended, the “anchor point” — a secure spot where climbers can attach their gear — that they were tied to “broke loose,” he said. The men then fell nearly 200 vertical feet and then skidded at least another 200 feet across a rocky, snow-covered chute before coming to a stop, Mr. Yarnell said.The climber who survived the fall hiked back to a car and drove about 60 miles west toward Newhalem, where he used a pay phone to call for help.“There was a long time delay before he got to Newhalem,” Mr. Yarnell said.A helicopter helped recover the remains of the three climbers, Mr. Yarnell said.The gear found at the scene included ropes, carabiners and harnesses.The North and South Early Winters Spires are rock formations in the Liberty Bell Group in the North Cascades. The area is home to various hiking trails and rock climbing sites. More

    • 150 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      At Least One Dead After Private Plane Crashes in Upstate New York

      by

      The plane, a Mitsubishi MU-2B carrying two passengers, went down Saturday in the town of Copake close to the Massachusetts border, according to the authorities.A plane crashed in a field on Saturday near the town of Copake, N.Y., leaving at least one dead, according to the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office.The plane, a Mitsubishi MU-2B bound for Columbia County Airport near Hudson, N.Y., was carrying two passengers and crashed a little after noon, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.The aircraft went down near Two Town Road and did not damage any structures, Undersheriff Jacqueline Salvatore told reporters at a news conference on Saturday afternoon. Ms. Salvatore did not say how many people had been killed or if there were any survivors. The two passengers have not been identified.A private plane of the same model departed Westchester County Airport in White Plains, N.Y., shortly after 11:30 a.m., flying north toward Hudson before turning east at about noon, according to the tracking site Flightradar24. Minutes later, the craft disappeared from the site near Copake, a small town bordering Taconic State Park near the Massachusetts border.That plane was registered to a company based outside Boston, according to F.A.A. records.Ms. Salvatore said that, in addition to officers from the sheriff’s department, personnel from the New York State Police and a local fire department responded to the scene. Law enforcement officials received a 911 call about the crash at around noon, she said.At that time, the weather in the area was mostly mild, with overcast skies and wind gusts up to 26 miles per hour, according to the National Weather Service.Snow and moisture on the ground were hampering response efforts, Ms. Salvatore said.“It’s in the middle of a field and it’s pretty muddy, so accessibility is difficult,” she said.It was not immediately clear Saturday afternoon what had caused the plane to crash, Ms. Salvatore said, but local law enforcement planed to conduct interviews in the neighborhood to learn more.The F.A.A. and the National Transportation Safety Board are also investigating the crash, according to the aviation agency’s statement.In November of last year, a small plane carrying a pilot and four rescue dogs crashed roughly 50 miles west of Copake, in a remote area of the Catskill Mountains. In June, five members of a family were killed about 40 miles northeast of Binghamton, N.Y., when their small plane crashed en route from Cooperstown to Georgia. More

    • 75 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      What Is the Bell 206L Helicopter?

      by

      The sightseeing helicopter that crashed into the Hudson River on Thursday, killing six people, was a Bell 206L LongRanger, a common single-engine aircraft long used for law enforcement missions, medical lifts, newsgathering and aerial tourism.The 206L has been in use for decades; its maker, Bell Textron, an aviation company based in Texas, took it out of production less than 10 years ago. With upkeep, the model is seen as safe and reliable, according to Greg Feith, a former National Transportation Safety Board investigator who has flown one. “It’s a tried and true aircraft,” Mr. Feith said, adding, “As long as the maintenance has been done, and done properly, it’s going to be a reliable aircraft.” The helicopter is versatile and light, can carry up to six occupants, and flies at maximum speeds of about 115 miles per hour, Mr. Feith said.Over the last 25 years, Bell 206 helicopters — a family of similar models that includes the Bell 206L — have been involved in 82 fatal accidents in the United States, according to National Transportation Safety Board records. A spokeswoman for Bell, Lindsey Hughes, said in a statement, “Bell is following this tragedy as it develops, but we must direct any questions to the NTSB.” The 206L has been particularly popular with helicopter sightseeing tour companies, according to Shawn Pruchnicki, a former airline pilot and an assistant professor at the Center for Aviation Studies at Ohio State University.Mr. Pruchnicki said that he had greater concerns about the safety record of aerial sightseeing companies than the model of helicopter. “The helicopter tours do have a problematic record,” he said, “and they have had for a long time.” Mr. Feith, the former N.T.S.B investigator, said he would want to know the number of flights the aircraft had flown on Thursday and whether it had recent maintenance work done. “You want to see if there was evidence of fatigue, overstress” on the helicopter, Mr. Feith said. “There are a lot of elements to be explored.”Santul Nerkar More