please
I’ve been reading this thread from post No.1, I’ve been posting in a similar thread on a Russian pilots’ forum. I’ve been always eager to participate in any major accident thread out there. But it probably takes a real-life involvement in an accident to realize how inappropriate, how leisurely, careless and “just-posting-for-fun-while-sipping-my-nice-hot-tea-and-not-giving-a-damn-to-be-honest” all these discussions are.
I came back from Perm (Boeing 737-500 crash) more than a week ago. But everything I saw and everything I felt is still with me. I saw relatives sitting and crying just a table away from us while we were eating and talking. I’ve been at the crash site, I’ve looked down the hill, I’ve looked across the railway, I’ve looked to the left where the wreaths and the plaque are, I’ve walked around the wreckage area, I’ve come across a kid’s shoe, a cell phone, a belt, a backpack, a book, an album “Watches”, a CD with English audio course. It hurts. That kid’s shoe will stay with me forever. No, there were no body fragments, no blood, no hairs, nothing like that but I think it would not give me so much pain as did those signs of life, those things still breathing with life, still belonging to someone. Seeing this makes you silent, makes you shut up. Makes you respect what you’ve seen with your silence.
It also makes you respect the work of investigators you’ve seen. It was the first (and I hope the last) time I saw how they work and I am probably too emotional but watching their work filled me not just with respect or admiration but with something more than that. Worship is the right word, I think. Serious, dedicated, thorough, intent, professional is how they look when you watch them work. Now when I look at this thread and other threads like this the contrast is stark.
Please, let us honor the relatives, let us honor the work of the investigators, let us honor the gravity of the event with our silence and let us wait patiently and silently for the official report.
This is not preaching. Me being there did not make me more special or better or cleverer than everybody else, it just made me say what I have just said. And I really feel the urge to spread these words to you and to share what I’ve seen and felt with you.