Rescue efforts continue today in Tengxian county of southern Guangxi province, where this Monday a Boeing 737-800 of the China Eastern airline crashed with 132 people on boardwithout the finding of no survivors or black boxes.
The plane was traveling between the cities of Kunming (southwest) and Guangzhou (southeast) and took off at 1:15 p.m. local time (05:15 GMT) on Monday before crashing to the ground in Guangxi at 2:38 p.m. local time (06:38 GMT).
For now no official source has clarified if foreigners were traveling aboard the wrecked plane. The incident caused a forest fire in the area, which is difficult for rescue teams to access due to its rugged terrain and remote location.
The People’s Liberation Army (Chinese Army) mobilized 80 soldiers in the early hours of Tuesday from the region to collaborate in the rescue efforts, which joined more than 700 firefighters from the local province and another 500 sent by the neighboring province, Canton.
The fire was suffocated on Monday afternoon and the rescue teams were able to approach the scene of the event, where they continued their tasks during the night: “There are pieces of the plane’s wing, some between two and three meters. There is also rubble and debris, some of which are probably pieces of clothing,” describes a worker quoted by the Xinhua agency.
The Guangxi Sanitary Commission also sent 36 ambulances and 80 medical workers to the area to assist possible survivors and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He has traveled to the scene to direct the operations.
The plane plummeted
“The plane plummeted and appeared to be in one piece during the fall. A few seconds later, it crashed,” a local resident quoted by Xinhua said.
According to data from the FlightRadar24 flight tracking portal, the aircraft was flying at 2:19 p.m. local time (06:19 GMT) at an altitude of 29,100 feet (8,870 meters) when, about 55 kilometers west of the town of Wuzhou, it began to descend.
The last point of contact of the flight, according to the aforementioned portal, was about 25 kilometers southwest of Wuzhou, at an altitude of 3,225 feet (989 meters), at 2:22 p.m. local time (06:22 GMT), which would mean that in just three minutes the apparatus descended almost 8,000 meters.
Other witnesses referred to the sound of the explosion: “I heard a very loud noise and a fire quickly started in my tree plantation,” explained a local.
FALLS IN THE STOCK MARKET
The plane crash, the first in China since 2010, when 44 people died in an accident in Yichun (northeast), has caused falls in the stock market value of the airline operating the flight, China Eastern Airlines.
The company lost 5.98% today at 10:30 local time (2:30 GMT) on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and 4.36% on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, where it is also listed. Hours after the incident, China Eastern ordered all 737-800 aircraft, the model of the accident plane, to remain on the ground until more information is available about what happened, according to local press.
Shortly after the event, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for an investigation to clarify both the causes of the accident “as soon as possible” and other possible safety problems in the civil aviation sector.
Source: Lasexta
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