This mountain village was a remote place, a haven for holiday hikers and seasoned rock climbers, until this week, when it became a place of incomprehensible tragedy for the families of the passengers on a routine German flight.
The crash of the Airbus A320 jet on a snow-sprinkled range near here on Tuesday turned the deep ravines into a mountain morgue and the village into a place of mourning. It also transformed it into a gathering place, as would-be rescuers, investigators, cabinet members on Tuesday, and the leaders of France, Germany and Spain on Wednesday, all converged here in the wake of the Germanwings flight’s inexplicable descent into a mountainside.
As the names of the dead began to trickle out — 150, all told, from at least 15 countries — and as investigators sought to solve the mystery of why the flight went down, residents here also prepared to receive the victims’ families. Hundreds of the relatives are expected to descend on the valley, said Francis Hermitte, the mayor.
The magnitude of the task of recovering the bodies was sinking in on Wednesday as seven helicopters roared nonstop over this village, up to the slate and limestone escarpment strewn with pieces of wreckage. It was becoming clear that both determining the cause of the crash and accounting for the human toll would probably be a lengthy mission. It is likely to take more than two weeks to bring the wreckage and body parts off the mountain, and identifying the 150 people who died will take much longer, rescue personnel said.
The crash site is inaccessible by road or foot, and even helicopters cannot land because there is nowhere flat enough. Rescuers, doctors and investigators must be lowered onto the mountainside by cables.
Their task then is to preserve the debris in packages that must be hauled up to the hovering helicopters, said Fabrice Rouve, 46, an experienced rescue worker and former soldier who now works with the High Mountain division of the gendarmes.
All non-Alpine-trained officials at the scene — doctors, investigators and airplane engineers — must be accompanied by Alpine rescuers to ensure that they do not slip and tumble down the mountain. There are worries, as well, that intruders would find a way to reach the crash site and disturb the debris, which is essential to the investigation, said Mr. Rouve, so five gendarmes were being left overnight to guard the site.
Mr. Rouve, like others who had flown up to the mountain, was struck, if not shaken, by the sheer destruction he saw. Xavier Roy, the coordinator for emergency personnel, said after flying over the site that he was surprised by the absence of big pieces of wreckage, an engine or a large piece of the fuselage, typically visible after a crash.
“Here, we are not seeing anything except bits and pieces,” Mr. Roy said. “The largest piece we have seen so far is the equivalent of a car door.” He said that the initial rescue workers who reached the scene on Tuesday had scoured the area, looking for movement or sounds from any potential survivors, but that they had not heard or seen anything to suggest that anyone might have lived through the crash.
n story Leaders of the three countries most affected by the tragedy — President François Hollande of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain — went to the mountain Wednesday afternoon to thank emergency medical workers and pay homage to the dead.
Mr. Hollande was the only one of the three who did not lose fellow citizens, and he spoke in a heartfelt tone, as if reassuring a family member, and called the leaders by their first names. He later promised that France would do everything it could to help, from investigating to supporting the families of the victims who were expected to come to this hamlet in the next few days. “We must understand what happened; we owe it to the families and to the countries that are impacted by this tragedy,” he said.
Ms. Merkel and Mr. Rajoy thanked Mr. Hollande, but Ms. Merkel, who lost 72 of her citizens in the crash and has sometimes seemed at odds with the French president over policy, was moved by the French outpouring. “Dear François, I’d like to say a heartfelt thank you in the name of millions of Germans who appreciate this German-Franco friendship,” she said.
The plane touched families from at least 15 countries, but the biggest shares were from Spain, which lost 45 citizens, and from Germany. Among those who died were a newlywed couple hoping to settle in Düsseldorf, the flight’s destination; the opera singers Oleg Bryjak, a bass baritone, and Maria Radner, a contralto; the wife of a Catalan politician; an Australian hoping to start a teaching career in France, and a mother with her 7-month-old baby. There were 16 high school students and two of their teachers, returning to Germany after a week at an exchange program outside of Barcelona, where the flight took off.
The flight was in so many ways a reflection of Europe today, with the majority of those on board making a short hop from one European Union country to another, mixed with a smattering of farther-flung visitors.
On Wednesday, as early-morning fog gave way to a cold overcast day, emergency workers were placing flags to mark the locations of the victims.
Mr. Rouve said that in more than 14 years on the job, he had dug people out of avalanches, rescued stranded rock climbers and recovered the bodies of fallen climbers. But he said the crash of the Germanwings flight was a different order of destruction.
“All of my colleagues who are experts, we all agreed, we had never seen anything like this,” he said. “First we saw just some tendrils of smoke from the wreckage, and it’s hard to imagine for a big aircraft like this, but there was nothing left,” he added.
Mr. Rouve said that what was most distressing to him was the state of the victims’ remains.
“There were no more whole bodies,” he said, although he could not be sure he had seen the entire site because the wreckage was scattered over a large area.
Seynes-les-Alpes, a village of 1,400 in a valley a three-hour drive northwest of Nice, found itself overrun. The atmosphere was somber, with natives especially distressed that their village had been turned into a place of such tragedy. Many spontaneously offered to lend a hand in any way they could, as if wanting to make amends for the destruction in what almost all locals call “our mountains.”
While the authorities were making plans to help hundreds of families travel to the village, residents and local hoteliers offered families places to stay for free, Mayor Hermitte said.
Villagers set up a temporary chapel in a school gymnasium for the families to pray and be alone, and educators at the local high school offered to act as translators for the families.
René Vaugeois, who retired here more than 10 years ago and has the ruddy look of an enthusiastic hiker, said that he felt sad that the mountain environment which had brought him so much happiness was now enveloped in mourning.
“We are very moved; those are our mountains, we hike there every summer and we’ve done every peak here,” he said. Asked whether he would take victims’ families into his home he did not hesitate: “I would do it.”
Friday 27 March 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/26/world/europe/challenges-weigh-heavily-on-recovery-efforts-in-germanwings-crash.html?_r=0
