Plane crash aftermath on video

[Tale]

Warning: some may find this video disturbing. The crash happened less than 12 hours ago and has killed about 50 people, with about 80 survivors. Video may play an ad first, please bear with it:

http://au.news.yahoo.com/070307/23/12nnx.html

As I have already admitted in the "what you do and where" thread, I work in the newsroom which was employing this cameraman, Wayan Sukarda. The fact he actually got out of the plane with his camera and filmed this is amazing to me.

A family friend of one of my colleagues is among the most seriously hurt. It is a terrible tragedy, but this video is like something out of Lost or the movie Fearless meeting reality.

[Tale]

Looks like our biggest non-commercial rival has the first 4 mins 30 secs from us, and has put it online raw and unedited:

Windows Media video
RealPlayer video

[Riggswolfe]

I have very mixed feelings about that video. Sure it was good for his career but there is something very chilling about filming your fellow survivors instead of trying to help.

[Ironwood]

I'm not clicking those links and I don't even understand why anyone else would want to.

No, Really.

 

[Big Gulp]

I'm not clicking those links and I don't even understand why anyone else would want to.

No, Really.

 

Ever rubberneck when passing a car crash?  I do.

[Ironwood]

No.  I don't.  I do, however, get really, really fucked off when the motorway traffic crawls to 20 miles an hour because someone is hoping to see a corpse.

[Righ]

I have very mixed feelings about that video. Sure it was good for his career but there is something very chilling about filming your fellow survivors instead of trying to help.

He may have done both. The footage doesn't start in a smoke filled cabin, it starts some time later, after both the cameraman and the bulk of the survivors have moved a safe distance from the plane. As it was only a few hundred feet from the airport perimeter, emergency services were already on the scene. If he didn't have first aid experience, then his inability to speak the local language probably made him less useful than the other passengers by the time he picked up the camera. We don't know what happened in the immediate aftermath - he may have saved lives.

Yes, quite remarkable - not only the footage, but the number of survivors. If I am in an aircraft that crashes off the end of a runway, I want it to go into a paddy field rather than into an express road.

[Llava]

I'm not clicking those links and I don't even understand why anyone else would want to.

No, Really.

 

Agreed.

[SnakeCharmer]

Not much more in the following needs to be said, as far as I am concerned.

I have very mixed feelings about that video. Sure it was good for his career but there is something very chilling about filming your fellow survivors instead of trying to help.

Agreed.  At least he'll be on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and every other major news station now.

"YOU JUST SURVIVED A HORRIFIC PLANE CRASH! HOW DOES IT FEEL!?" - to be said by every talking chucklehead out there....

I'm not clicking those links and I don't even understand why anyone else would want to.

I don't get it either.  Seeing other people suffer like that (and in other assorted Faces of Death type videos) makes my stomach turn.

Ever rubberneck when passing a car crash?  I do.

/openhandedbitchslap

I've been rearended TWICE from dumb fucking rubberneckers.

[Llava]

I did rubberneck once.  It wasn't an accident, though.  It was some crazy old fat bald guy getting arrested.  He was cuffed.  I had to look, he was very old.

[Tale]

(angry post edited out - made redundant by the post below)

[Tale]

I started this response last night and I don't have time to finish it, so I'll post it as-is. And of course, this is all my own opinions as an F13 poster, nothing I am posting represents my employer - which isn't Seven anyway, I just work with them.


Some facts, most of which you could easily have gathered from the film itself if you paid any attention.

He's Indonesian, not Australian. A freelance cameraman trying to make a living in his poor country, currently commissioned by an Australian network. He was on the plane with a sound/crew guy who works with him, also Indonesian. They helped each other to get out of the plane - I have no information on anyone else they helped and neither do you.

He was injured in the plane crash. You can hear his groans on the video, above the plane engine whine.

They were in a plane crash. They're in major shock. Last night, Wayan (the cameraman) lost the ability to speak properly, freaked out, and needed help. He was able to speak again this afternoon.

He followed his instincts. To suggest he thought "here's a chance to make some cash" is offensive and ignorant. Camera guys raise their camera as instinctively as they breathe air. Lying injured himself after being in a fiery plane crash, I can't see him doing much else.

And I think it's good that his instincts went into action. By filming:
1. He recorded vital evidence for the crash investigation. If it had been terrorism as some initially thought, it would have been doubly important.
2. He recorded visual proof of who had survived, that could instantly help relatives find out.
3. He recorded the potential last moments of people for their families.
4. He did something he could do, while fleeing people streamed past him.
5. In a poor nation, he showed the world in no uncertain terms that people would need help, which they are now getting (western doctors flown in to treat burns, etc).

It's the same as someone surviving the World Trade Center attack and filming what happened. Are you going to blame them because they did not rush back into the collapsing buildings and search the rubble instead? It's the same as the victims who filmed the Asian tsunami. Because of them, we know what it was really like, which has helped in many ways. Are you saying they should have been down in the water, diving in to try and save someone?

Different people react in different ways in a crisis. Military people and emergency services personnel will tell you their training takes over. The cameraman's life training is to keep shooting, film the enemy troops as they run towards you, record the shock wave as it comes at you, just get it on camera.

I suggest you read about Kevin Carter. What he did raised awareness of hunger in Africa and brought more help to starving people in Africa. But people drove him to suicide by saying "why didn't you help instead of taking the photo?". He helped plenty.

[Ironwood]

Most of the responses ?  Surely a mere two.

I have nowt to say about artistic licence :  but I know what I don't like.  Plane crashes: Not so much.

So get off the fucking high horse.



EDIT : You posted more from the high horse while I wrote...

[Big Gulp]

/openhandedbitchslap

I've been rearended TWICE from dumb fucking rubberneckers.

Were one of them me?  No?  Well then kindly go fuck yourself.  As to the rest of you, I must have forgot that I'm on F13 and thus am dealing with the usual band of sanctimonious douchebags who certainly wouldn't ever own up to something as shallow as the occasional rubberneck.

God, I hate you fucking people.

[HaemishM]

Are you saying they should have been down in the water, diving in to try and save someone?

Yes. I'm literally saying that.

But I wasn't there and have no idea how I'd react in that situation, nor what I would do with said celebrity afterwards.

I'd still rather he were helping in some way besides filming it.

[Tale]

Are you saying they should have been down in the water, diving in to try and save someone?

Yes. I'm literally saying that.

But I wasn't there and have no idea how I'd react in that situation, nor what I would do with said celebrity afterwards.

I'd still rather he were helping in some way besides filming it.

Aceh tsunami video - warning, may be disturbing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00mqLMdKqbc

I don't think watching or filming something like that is rubbernecking. Because I've seen it, I feel more sympathetic and appalled for what happened to the tsunami victims. It is amazing that the person had the presence of mind to keep filming, providing the only real record of what happened to the people of Banda Aceh.

If you view something like that and think "wow, awesome", then there's something wrong with you - not the person who filmed it.

[HaemishM]

I'm not saying it's not hard work, or that those videos aren't illuminating. I'm saying the photographer's first instinct should not be to film the destruction and misery of others. And I say this as a photographer.

[Furiously]

I think it depends on the photographer.

I am certain that some of the news guys I have worked with would be picking up the camera and others would just sit there in shock.

[WayAbvPar]

I don't think I have seen that Aceh footage before. That looks far more destructive and terrifying than the footage from Phuket and other places that you see more regularly. /shudder

[Riggswolfe]

He followed his instincts. To suggest he thought "here's a chance to make some cash" is offensive and ignorant.

You're joking right? Of course he thought about cash. He wasn't filming this as some kind of selfless public service.

It's the same as someone surviving the World Trade Center attack and filming what happened. Are you going to blame them because they did not rush back into the collapsing buildings and search the rubble instead? It's the same as the victims who filmed the Asian tsunami. Because of them, we know what it was really like, which has helped in many ways. Are you saying they should have been down in the water, diving in to try and save someone?

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. This dude's  first instinct was to profit off of other people's misery. The video is interesting, but the guy is scum.

[Tale]

Injured people in shock don't see dollar signs after tumbling out of a crashed plane on fire.

Armchair critics to whom it has never happened, sitting on their fat arses and posting ignorant criticisms without knowing the facts, are the real scum.

People who form opinions as easily as that, are the kind of people who vote George W Bush into office and give 80% support for war in Iraq. Fucking worthless sheep.

[Tale]

I don't think I have seen that Aceh footage before. That looks far more destructive and terrifying than the footage from Phuket and other places that you see more regularly. /shudder

Banda Aceh, on the tip of Sumatra, was just near the epicentre. Everywhere else, you're looking at a weakening tsunami. In Banda Aceh, it was like a nuclear bomb.



(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake)

[Riggswolfe]

Injured people in shock don't see dollar signs after tumbling out of a crashed plane on fire.

Armchair critics to whom it has never happened, sitting on their fat arses and posting ignorant criticisms without knowing the facts, are the real scum.

You're naive.

People who form opinions as easily as that, are the kind of people who vote George W Bush into office and give 80% support for war in Iraq. Fucking worthless sheep.

People who voted for Bush and support the war are indeed sheep IMO. That has no bearing on this discussion though.

[HaemishM]

Armchair critics to whom it has never happened, sitting on their fat arses and posting ignorant criticisms without knowing the facts, are the real scum.

I've already said I don't know what I would do in that situation. But I hope that I, and I hope that other human beings, would not reach for the camera before helping people. I hope that would be anyone's first reaction, but I know that it isn't.

[Roac]

Everyone who's flaming the cameraman seems to be doing so because his intent was selfish over selfless.  It may be worth pointing out that when he *starts* filming, he's well away from the crash site, and it could very well be that he was ordered back, was carried back, helped someone else back, and anything else.  The second thing is that generally speaking, seeing footage about an incident can help the public come to grasp with what is happening.  You can't deny how powerful the video is of the twin towers getting hit, for example.  Images like this make an incident more real to the general public, who would otherwise just see numbers of injured/dead and ignore it.  Or with things like the tsunami, it may help people understand how bad things are so that they donate.  That would certainly be helpful.  Or he could've just been thinking about dollar signs, or whatever currency he's paid in.

But you don't know, and fuck everyone who comes down on him with such extreme doubt as to what his real intentions might have been.  Judgemental assholes, I swear, you don't even think before you open your mouth to shit on someone else. 

The other side of it is the intention of the viewer; rubberneckers, or the video equivalent.  Some people watch/read news about bad events to keep in touch with what's going on.  Self education.  Some people just love to watch a spectacle.  The second group probably has a sucky moral compass, but again it's hard to tell off the bat (although if you're on the road, that's a wrong place to "educate" yourself.  Turn on the raido, or buy a paper later). 

[Llava]

I just don't like watching people suffering.  I feel bad enough for them already, I don't need to see the burns.

And I honestly do believe that most people who watch something like that do it to rubberneck, not to educate themselves.  There's a morbid curiosity there, and it's why craploads of sites on the intarweb offer that exact content.  That's creepy and indicates, to me, that something is seriously wrong with the person.

God, I hate you fucking people.

Leave the site.  I think there are one or two other ones out there that discuss games and pop culture.

And yes, the above comments regarding rubberneckers apply to you.  And no, I don't rubbreneck, with the exception posted above.

Find a healthier outlet for your fascination with the grotesque and morbid.
http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=2502.msg279960#new

[Roac]

And I honestly do believe that most people who watch something like that do it to rubberneck, not to educate themselves.  There's a morbid curiosity there, and it's why craploads of sites on the intarweb offer that exact content.  That's creepy and indicates, to me, that something is seriously wrong with the person.

I don't doubt you.  Just trying to point out that there's a difference between Faces of Death and something on the History Channel, both in the intents of the authors and the viewers.  Sometimes, anyway.

[Righ]

I'm saying the photographer's first instinct should not be to film the destruction and misery of others.

Apparently it wasn't. And despite the fact that the footage starts after the cameraman is a long way from the crash and emergency services are at the scene, many people are still assuming or at least claiming that it was. Which doesn't seem like a particularly valid criticism, unless your intention is merely to stir up an Internet pissing contest.

[Llava]

And I honestly do believe that most people who watch something like that do it to rubberneck, not to educate themselves.  There's a morbid curiosity there, and it's why craploads of sites on the intarweb offer that exact content.  That's creepy and indicates, to me, that something is seriously wrong with the person.

I don't doubt you.  Just trying to point out that there's a difference between Faces of Death and something on the History Channel, both in the intents of the authors and the viewers.  Sometimes, anyway.

I can agree to that.

But I doubt most people who watch this sort of thing to get their rocks off or whatever it is that it does for them turn to the History Channel.  SpikeTV pretty much has 24 hour World's Worst Car Crashes, doesn't it?

[lamaros]

Did we really need another thread to establish that there are certain individuals here who don't think and like bashing other people just for the sake of it? (Especially in situations that deal with death)

Did we Really?

[Ironwood]

Sigh.  I just didn't want to see the video.  Leave me alone.

 

[schild]

Edit: Fuckit. I don't want a post in this thread.

[lamaros]

Sigh.  I just didn't want to see the video.  Leave me alone.

 

I like you and respect your views. I also haven't watched the video and don't wish to.

[HaemishM]

I'm saying the photographer's first instinct should not be to film the destruction and misery of others.

Apparently it wasn't. And despite the fact that the footage starts after the cameraman is a long way from the crash and emergency services are at the scene, many people are still assuming or at least claiming that it was. Which doesn't seem like a particularly valid criticism, unless your intention is merely to stir up an Internet pissing contest.

I didn't watch the video, because I didn't want to see the suffering. So I didn't see how it began, and am just an uninformed asshole engaging in an Internet pissing contest.

I'd still rather the photographer not take the pictures.

[Dren]

I'm not looking at that either.  As to the rest of this conversation, I don't care.  I'm not looking at it.