SOMETIMES, in the midst of disaster, miracles happen.
Just moments after taking off, Air India Flight AI171, bound for Gatwick, came plummeting to the ground in a terrifying fireball killing all on board – save one lone survivor.
HT PhotoVishwash Ramesh is the lone survivor of the devastating Air India crash that happened yesterday[/caption]
GettyThe flight, bound for the UK, came crashing down into buildings shortly after take-off[/caption]
Footage captured the terrifying moment the Air India flight crashed into the groundx/nchorAnandN
TwitterIt was initially thought all 242 on board had been killed[/caption]
Astonishing footage showed Brit Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, who sat in seat 11A, walking away from the crash before rescue workers greeted him in astonishment.
He was even able to produce his boarding pass before being whisked off to hospital, where he is being treated for minor injuries to his chest, eyes, and feet.
Given the scale of disaster when plane crashes happen, it is very rare only one person makes it out alive.
There are only a handful of people who can say they were lucky enough to be the sole survivor.
But many are left with scars – both physical and mental – traumatised by memories of plummeting from the sky, and haunted by the sudden loss of their family members.
Speaking to the media shortly after his miraculous survival was confirmed, Vishwash said: “Thirty seconds after take-off, there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed.
“It all happened so quickly. When I got up, there were bodies all around me. I was scared. I stood up and ran. There were pieces of the plane all around me. “
Dr Marianne Trent, clinical psychologist and author of the Grief Collection, said Vishwash is likely to suffer from survivors guilt.
She said: “There’s no real sense why that should have been the one seat where the sole survivor sat.
“People often swap seats on planes and he might have a sense of ‘why me?’”
‘America’s Orphan’
Vishwash isn’t the only person to have walked away from a plane crash, losing family members in the process.
At just four years old, Cecelia Crocker became the sole survivor when Northwest Airlines flight 225 crashed just moments after taking off from Detroit, in 1987.
The other 154 people on board were killed, as were two people on the ground.
But Cecelia Crocker survived – becoming known as “America’s Orphan”.
“I think about the accident every day,” said Crocker, now 42.
“It’s kind of hard not to think about it when I look in the mirror. I have visual scars, my arms and my legs and I have scars on my forehead.”
At just four years old, Cecelia Crocker was the only survivor in a 1987 plane crash in which she lost all her familySole Survivor
Sole SurvivorIt is believed Cecelia’s mum shielded her during the crash[/caption]
APCecelia in the hospital as a four-year-old after the crash[/caption]
Though Cecelia doesn’t remember the incident herself, her mum, dad, and six-year-old brother David were all killed.
It is believed that Cecelia’s mum, Paula, shielded her.
“When I realised I was the only person to survive that plane crash, I was maybe in middle school, high school maybe,” Crocker said.
“Being an adolescent and confused, so it was just extra stress for me. I remember feeling angry and survivor’s guilt. Why didn’t my brother survive? Why didn’t anybody? Why me?”
Dr Trent added that these feelings can linger on for years and affect every aspect of their lives.
“You might not feel worthy of people’s good thoughts and sympathy because you’re not the one who died,” she said.
There’s a black hole between the moment when I was seated in the plane and the moment I found myself in the water
Bahia Bakari
“People with survivor’s guilt withdraw into themselves, their world becomes smaller, there’s an impact on their functioning, their ability to get things done.”
Clinging for life
Back in 2009, a Yemenia Airways flight plummeted into the Indian Ocean with its engines at full throttle.
All 152 on board were killed – except 12-year-old Bahia Bakari, who was on the way to her grandfather’s wedding.
She was left drifting in the water for hours with “the taste of jet fuel” in her mouth, and only a piece of debris to cling on to.
Speaking to a French court, she recalled the moment things started to go wrong.
“I started to feel the turbulence but nobody was reacting much, so I told myself it must be normal,” said Bahia.
“I felt something like an electric shock go through my body. There’s a black hole between the moment when I was seated in the plane and the moment I found myself in the water.”
AFPBahia Bakari miraculously survived by clinging onto wreckage when she was aged just 12[/caption]
AFPThe Yemenia Airways flight plummeted into the Indian Ocean[/caption]
APBahia spoke out about her experience for the first time in a French courtroom[/caption]
She remembers trying to climb up on to the wreckage, but lacked the strength to do so in the choppy waters.
It was only in the hospital that she was told she was the lone survivor.
Jungle fall
Others who survived found themselves not in the water but in thick jungle – yet just as far from civilisation as anyone stuck in the ocean.
Juliane Koepcke was flying over the Peruvian rainforest with her mother in 1971 when her plane was struck by lightning.
Aged just 17, she survived not only a two-mile fall to the ground but a ten day trek through the Amazon.
After flying into a dark cloud, her plane became engulfed by lightning, she recalled.
I was in freefall. I could see the canopy of the jungle spinning towards me
Juliane Koepcke
“My mother and I held hands but we were unable to speak. Other passengers began to cry and weep and scream,” she told the BBC.
“My mother said very calmly: ‘That is the end, it’s all over’. Those were the last words I ever heard from her.
“The plane jumped down and went into a nose-dive,” added Juliane.
“It was pitch black and people were screaming, then the deep roaring of the engines filled my head completely.
“Suddenly the noise stopped and I was outside the plane. I was in freefall. I could see the canopy of the jungle spinning towards me.”
Alone with a broken collarbone and deep cuts to her legs, and wearing only a short, sleeveless mini-dress and white sandals, she began to walk.
Juliane Koepcke trekked through the Amazon for ten days aged just 17
Refer to CaptionAnnette Herfkens spent eight days in the Vietnamese jungle after her plane hit a mountain ridge[/caption]
YouTubeJim Polehinke was the only survivor of the 2006 Comair crash – in which he was co-pilot[/caption]
Only a small bag of sweets kept her from total starvation.
Initially thinking she was hallucinating, Juliane came across a boat and a hut where she spent the night, pulling maggots out of a wound in her upper arm, before finally a group of men found her the next day and took her back to civilisation.
Broken bones and collapsed lung
Juliane’s story has parallels to that of Annette Herfkens, who, aged 31, spent eight days in the Vietnamese jungle by herself awaiting rescue.
After Vietnam Airlines flight 474 dropped from the sky in 1992, killing the other 30 people on board, Annette was left with twelve broken bones, her jaw hanging off and a collapsed lung.
How miracle Brit may face mental battle
THOUGH lucky to be alive, Brit Vishwash Kumar Ramesh may struggle with the mental impact of yesterday’s Air India crash for decades, Dr Marianne Trent, clinical psychologist, told The Sun.
“Post trauma people often struggle to sleep, have intrusive thoughts and there will be triggers such as noises and smells of the fire, the smoke, booking future holidays,” she said.
“All those stories of the people he met along the way, or maybe those he didn’t take the time to talk to, will be replaying in his mind. He will be second guessing everything he did.”
Dr Trent said he may even feel guilt that he walked away with minor injuries.
She said: “He may just feel grateful to survive and have walked away but it’s very strange that only one person survived.
“We need to allow him to feel what he’s feeling. Survivors of fatal car crashes who escaped with minor injuries might wish they’d broken a leg or had something physical to show for their life changing experience.
“They might ask ‘why don’t I look different.. How can I look like the same person?’ It’s harder for people to empathise if you look the same way too.”
Dr Trent added that memories of his brother might be forever entwined with the horror of the crash.
“His experience will be overlapped by grief and trauma.
“Usually if you think of a brother there are thoughts about songs you might have heard growing up together, or things you did, nice memories.
“But when someone dies the whole relationship changes and those thoughts can make you feel really awful and send you right down into the depths again.
“The fact this is all being played out on an international stage will also be extremely hard for him and he will need a lot of psychological help to come to terms with what has happened.”
Her plane had crashed into a mountain ridge and she now lay surrounded by the ripped-apart fuselage, with a dead stranger across her.
“That’s where you have fight or flight – I definitely chose flight,” she told the Guardian.
“I stayed in the moment. I trusted that they were going to find me. I didn’t think, ‘What if a tiger comes?’ I thought, ‘I’ll deal with it when the tiger comes.’ I didn’t think, ‘What if I die?’ I thought, ‘I will see about it when I die.’”
Crawling along by her elbows, she managed to capture water with parts of the plane’s insulation until a rescue party carried her down in a hammock.
Self-harm pain
In all these cases, only one passenger made it out alive.
But when the plane’s pilot is the sole person spared death, the feelings of survivor’s guilt can be even worse.
The bad voice says, ‘No, stay here, have another shot of liquor’
Jim Polehinke
Jim Polehinke was co-pilot aboard Com Air flight 5191, which crashed seconds after takeoff from Lexington, Kentucky in 2006.
“I’ve cried harder than any man has ever cried, or any man should be able to cry,” he said.
“My wife was there to support me to where I could just put my head on her shoulder and cry.
“It’s that constant struggle where my inner voice wants to keep going forward.
“The good voice says, ‘Yeah, come on, you have the inner strength to do that,’ but the bad voice says, ‘No, stay here, have another shot of liquor.’”
Dr Trent also highlighted how harmful behaviours can become a crutch for people to deal with survivor’s guilt.
She said: “Sometimes people become a risk to themselves through non intentional self injury, drinking too much, not showing and looking after themselves, taking recreational drugs to cope.”
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