Fragment 3 - Paradise Lost

The third tragedy during the period I managed a small remote mining townsite was undoubtedly the most tragic of them all and had an impact that resonates with me to this very day.

It came during my last Christmas on the island. December is the height of the wet season and cyclones and torrential rain are common-place.

This particular December had been unprecedentedly wet and the light aircraft that kept us in touch with the nearest mainland airport had been unable to take off or land for several days. At a time when so many workers were planning to head south and reunite with family and loved ones, this enforced flight-ban threw a pall over the cheer and goodwill that generally surrounds the festive season wherever one lives.

Our airstrip, carved out of rock and covered with sludge-like red gravel and dust, also doubled as a 700-metre par 7 hole on our challenging golf course. It was not an easy strip to navigate in bad weather. It was not an easy golf-hole either, with rocky gullies, ravines and snakes awaiting errant tee-shots on either side!

Finally, the rain eased sufficiently for a flight to be scheduled for the morning of Christmas Eve. A Cessna would be taking off with six souls on board - the pilot and five workers who considered themselves lucky to be on board this first flight out to civilisation.

It was a Saturday or a Sunday. I know that because I was luxuriating in bed, revelling in the fact that I was at liberty for a few days. Suddenly I was awoken by a series of fluttering or flapping noises and the sound of sweet treble voices like those of a boys' choir. I had been assigned an apartment to live in by then and I recall flinging open my bedroom door and demanding that my flat-mate account for the loud singing I had just heard. And then we both heard the mournful note of the island's alarm siren. We rushed out to the balcony and there, away to the south, was a large quantity of black smoke spiralling upwards from where the airstrip lay.

The airport attendant - the only witness to the crash - later told me that the small Cessnaa had struggled to become airborne and that it had clipped power lines and been flipped to the ground where it immediately burst into flames. While my fire and safety crews did what they could at the airstrip, the airport attendant and I met in my office to deal with some equally pressing issues.

As he read off the names from the manifest he held in his hands, I retrieved the personnel files of each worker who had been on board so authorities could inform the next-of-kin. The first two were a married couple whom I did not know very well, but I did know them and it was devastating to learn that they were now dead. The third name was that of a man I knew very well as he reported directly to me. He was a lovely gentle and smiling man and he had been on his way south for a Christmas reunion with his wife and two young children. With tears streaming down my face, I went on to retrieve the last two files - they were two young men with whom I served in the Army Reserve and they too had been on their way to spend Christmas Day with their families.

My next duty was to be at the airport to ensure that video footage and a vast number of photographs were taken before the bodies were removed from the sodden and twisted wreckage and placed in body bags. As my vehicle was the only one with a large flat tray at the rear, it was deemed appropriate that it be used to ferry the bodies to a hastily-emptied freezer container at the rear of the island's supermarket. The island's ambulance would have been hideously soiled if we had used that instead and the smell of burnt flesh is both sweet and sickening and pervasive.

Even though the back of my vehicle was later sanitised and scrubbed, I could never look at it again without recalling bags filled with broken and charred bodies.

Every worker, every resident was devastated by this tragic event, Whatever our occasional differences, the people in our island community were like a vast extended family. Tears were shed by many that Christmas Eve and again when we all congregated in the Community Hall a few days later to participate in a memorial service for our work colleagues and friends. As we sang the Twenty-third Psalm - such a beautiful melody and words that never fail to move me - I truly felt my heart was breaking.

Over the next week or so, I was obliged to sit through endless analyses and reviews of the plane crash. I was even obliged to view photographs that made clear the agonies endured by those who died. Death had not occurred on impact. These people had burned to death. One could only pray that they had been unconscious at the time, but in one case in particular - one of my fellow Army Reservists - it was obvious that he had made some attempt to escape the flames.

It was shortly after this that I resigned and headed south to complete my university studies. The two things are not necessarily connected, but that plane crash represented a loss of innocence for me - it made me far more aware of how precious life is and it gave me timely warning that every earthly paradise is only a heartbeat away from death at any given moment.

There is one final comment I feel compelled to make. That noise I heard shortly before the disaster siren sounded - that whooshing and flapping sound and the beautiful, high-pitched voices lifted in song; what do I make of those? Well, I am not a deeply religious man, but I truly believe that what I heard around the time of impact was the rustling and rushing of angels' wings accompanied by some heavenly choir. It was something deeply spiritual; something I feel blessed to have experienced.

Comments

What a tragedy, an event that has haunted you to this day, and one can only imagine the heartache of all those families that now associate the holiday with unbearable loss. I hope the passage of time has eased their burden as well as yours. And what a hopeful thought that those souls were being borne home by angels.
 
Losing six people you know, some very well, is an event that does stamp your mind and personality forever. And makes it hard to forget that our days in this world may end at any time. That they may end with a rush of wings and choir of hymns is comforting. There is no doubt in my mind that you heard exactly that.
 
There is nothing I can say.... I have a really bad loss in my past. A child. No angels sang.... but I think of him every day. He changed my world.
 

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