I didn't start it, Sir
No I did, as possibly something that was worth discussing pending the long wait for a full report on the specifics of this tragedy. The affect of terrain on the aftermath of this one is not really questionned, is it?
I am no expert on high speed upsets but I've watched racing motorcyclists sliding along tarmac at high speeds when they tumble, then seen them brush themselves down and walk away, and I have watched enough other racing incidents to know that if you can allow something to slide uniformly after it falls without further sudden decelerations in any plane, then chances are it will come to a halt largely in one piece.
That much isn't rocket science.
Formula 1 race circuit designers generally wouldn't permit a 70 foot gully between straights to be left as a likely final resting point for any of their people, so why should modern airport designers permit themselves to think differently?
As I implied before, Spain has spent billions levelling mountains and ravines in the last five years and built beautifully smooth wide motorways that generally link all these newly envigorated airports effortlessly. A few more days work with 360 degree excavators, pipelayers and graders would transform terrain like this into level survivable energy dissipating surfaces.
Sioux City had some horrible initial decelerative forces but if my memory serves correctly, people primarily self-evacuated from the large pieces after they slid to a halt. I am not sure that level access for the fire services was a significant survival factor on that one, just lots of level space to decelerate uniformly in one plane...maybe it was a bit of both, but the passengers fared proportionately so much better than in this one, I think?