- Among the substances now known to have
been burned in the El Al inferno were 800 pounds of depleted uranium and
three of the four chemicals needed to make sarin, including about 50 gallons
of dimethyl methylphosphonate, or DMMP.
-
- AMSTERDAM --As sirens wailed and flashing lights swept the fiery wreckage
of a 12-story apartment house hit by an Israeli El Al cargo jet in 1992,
the "black box" cockpit voice recorder disappeared from the evidence
bin where firefighters insist they put it.
-
- Five hours into the rescue effort, after
Dutch security police had cleared the crash site of emergency workers and
press, men in white hooded fire suits were seen jumping from a helicopter
into the smoldering rubble and carrying off debris in unmarked trucks.
-
- Police videotapes were erased before
investigators had a chance to review them, and vital details of the cargo's
hazardous contents--recently revealed to include components of the deadly
nerve gas sarin--were kept secret for years.
-
- The investigation of the disaster, which
took at least 43 lives on the ground and four more aboard the Boeing 747
jet, now looks to be either a monumental bungle or a textbook cover-up.
-
- But if Israeli or Dutch officials conspired
to hide the full extent of the risks to which those in the crash area were
exposed, they overlooked an important source of evidence: the survivors.
-
- Six years after the crash in the densely
populated Bijlmermeer district, at least 1,200 residents and rescue workers
are complaining of physical and psychological ailments they fear were caused
by something carried in the El Al cargo hold.
-
- With the disclosure this month that the
jet carried sarin components, passions have flared among sick residents
and their baffled doctors. A Dutch parliamentary inquiry has been ordered
to try to discover the truth about the disaster.
-
- "We need to know what our patients
were exposed to in order to treat them," said Nizaarali Makdoembaks,
a Suriname-born doctor whose family practice treats 250 people suffering
from unexplained skin diseases, nervous disorders, birth defects and, most
recently, cancer.
-
- Woman Found to Have Encephalomyelitis
-
- Herma Sprey was preparing Sunday supper
on the evening of Oct. 4, 1992, when the groaning engines of the El Al
jet, which had just taken off from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport after a
refueling stop on its flight from New York, drew her to the kitchen window.
She watched awe-struck as the jet lurched, then nose-dived into an apartment
complex two blocks away, where she herself once lived. She ordered her
children to stay inside and ran to the crash scene.
-
- "It was horrible because you couldn't
help anyone. There was nothing you could do because it was so hot from
the fires burning everywhere," recalled Sprey, now 45. She found one
friend amid the chaos and helped her lead others out of undamaged but smoke-filled
apartments nearby. She spent at least five hours in the crash zone.
-
- "After half a year, my hair fell
out and I started getting these muscle cramps. I thought I had arthritis,"
said Sprey, who recently has been diagnosed with encephalomyelitis, an
inflammation of the brain and spinal cord.
-
- Jorgs Ijzermans--a prominent physician
with the Netherlands' biggest hospital, the Amsterdam Medical Center, located
only a couple of miles from the crash site--was asked by the Dutch Health
Ministry earlier this year to study people who had been at the accident
scene and were complaining of mysterious illnesses.
-
- "Because we don't know what was
on board, we don't know if their complaints are related" to the El
Al crash, said Ijzermans. "A lot of people have skin problems that
won't go away. There are also arthritis-like symptoms in knees, elbows,
hips, and allergy and breathing complaints. Several diseases with longer
incubation times are just now showing up, like cancer."
-
- The medical center issued an appeal in
June and July for people with health problems they suspect might be connected
with the air disaster to submit to reviews by Ijzermans' team of investigators.
More than 800 people from the Bijlmermeer neighborhood have been interviewed,
he said, and at least 300 more from other parts of Amsterdam are being
included in the study.
-
- "When we include firefighters and
rescue workers and those who have been relocated from the ruined apartments,
we have 1,200 or 1,300 cases, and people are still calling in," said
Ijzermans.
-
- Sarin Components Burned in Crash
-
- Among the substances now known to have
been burned in the El Al inferno were 800 pounds of depleted uranium and
three of the four chemicals needed to make sarin, including about 50 gallons
of dimethyl methylphosphonate, or DMMP.
-
- Dutch residents just learned those facts
from a report in the NRC Handelsblad newspaper timed for the sixth anniversary
of the crash. The report was based on copies of the cargo manifest obtained
from sources at the Dutch air transport authority, the RLD.
-
- The Transport Ministry, which oversees
the RLD, was properly informed of the shipment by El Al. However, it didn't
consider the cargo hazardous other than being flammable, said ministry
spokeswoman Judith Sepmeyer. She acknowledged that the government's response
to the disaster has been called into question and will be part of the parliamentary
inquiry.
-
- The sarin components were destined for
the Israeli Institute for Biological Research, a high-security defense
installation in the Tel Aviv suburb of Nes Ziona. Questions have emerged
about what Israel was doing with such quantities of nerve-gas components.
The government has said it was using them to test gas-mask filters.
-
- While the sarin-component disclosure
has kindled fears among the ailing crash zone residents that they may have
suffered nerve damage, government scientists dispute any connection.
-
- "The acute [toxicity] of this compound
is very low. You could probably drink it with your tea," said Hendrik
Benschop, chemical toxicology chief at the Netherlands Organization for
Applied Science Research, a government-funded institute. "There would
have to have been frequent exposure and in large amounts for this [DMMP]
to be related" to the outbreaks of illness.
-
- But Benschop conceded that the government's
handling of the crash investigation left people feeling "manipulated"
and their health complaints ignored.
-
- "It's a far more reasonable explanation
that the combination of effects from partially and completely burned materials
might have unpredictable effects," Benschop said, noting that the
jet also was carrying a heavy fuel load. "Because DMMP is a starting
material for sarin, it sets off a lot of red lights. But I firmly believe
it has nothing to do with the health problems of these people."
-
- Scientists with the World Health Organization
in Geneva, however, report that DMMP has induced cancer in laboratory mice.
-
- The Israeli government confirmed that
the sarin components were aboard after the NRC Handelsblad report this
month. Harn van den Berg, one of the newspaper's two main reporters on
the story, said the disclosure has served to spotlight the Dutch government's
secretive approach to the disaster as much as that of the Israelis.
-
- "The government has been very passive.
When the parliament asks for information, they get 20 or 30 airway bills
that they can't make anything out of. They get paperwork, not answers,"
he said.
-
- More troubling for residents of the crash
zone, who have come together in a community alliance calling itself the
Air Traffic Working Group, are the many instances of destroyed or lost
evidence.
-
- Hearings conducted by the RLD in the
first year after the crash included testimony from firefighters who recalled
finding and delivering the cockpit voice recorder to the El Al crash investigation
site at Schiphol Airport. The RLD's final report on its investigation declared
that the "black box" had disappeared in the confusing aftermath.
-
- An Israeli official, who declined to
be identified, said in an interview that the voice and flight data recorders
"were lost or destroyed or stolen."
-
- Mysterious Men Seen Searching for Cargo
-
- The same official said the mysterious
men in white suits were Red Cross workers. But witnesses have told police,
crash investigators, their doctors and journalists that the fire-jumpers
were clearly searching for remnants of the cargo, not victims.
-
- "They were dressed like Neil Armstrong
was when he landed on the moon," Ijzermans said he has been told repeatedly
by people being debriefed for the medical study.
-
- Thirty-two videotapes made by Amsterdam
city emergency response authorities to document the rescue effort were
found to have been erased when investigators were sent to view them.
-
- Records of communications between the
El Al pilot and air-traffic controllers also were destroyed after federal
security police copied the originals, then lost or destroyed the only copies,
said journalist Vincent Dekker of the Trouw newspaper. He has written a
book documenting irregularities and contradictions in official reports
about the crash, titled "Going Down, Going Down," the last words
of El Al pilot Isaac Fuchs.
-
- The missing records also might have explained
why Fuchs chose to circle back over heavily populated urban territory and
head for Schiphol, eight miles away, instead of attempting a survivable
ditching in the much closer Ijsselmeer inlet after both right engines exploded
and broke off the plane.
-
- "I think the government now regrets
that it was not more open with the public in the beginning," said
Lony Wesseling, one of the community alliance leaders trying to elicit
a more accurate account of the accident and force diversion of hazardous
air cargoes away from urban airports.
-
- Schiphol, Europe's fourth-busiest airport
with 350,000 flights last year, has seen its traffic grow by 70% since
the accident, intensifying fears that another disaster could be waiting
to happen.
-
- "Nothing has changed since 1992--there
are still dangerous goods being flown over us every day," said Wesseling,
who was en route home in her car with her two children when the jet crashed
about a mile away, surrounding them with thick black smoke clouds and a
shower of flaming debris.
-
- Israeli officials contend there was nothing
aboard the jet that would be harmful to the crash zone residents. A statement
earlier this month by Aviv Bushinsky, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, confirmed that 190 liters (about 50 gallons) of DMMP
was on board and destined for the defense institute for use in testing
gas-mask filters.
-
- "I would like to stress that the
chemical is nontoxic and it is used for different purposes in public industry,"
Bushinsky said.
-
- Likewise, the airline maintains it has
no further information relevant to the renewed Dutch inquiry.
-
- "El Al has never hidden any facts
or details regarding cargo flown on the flight in question and has always
provided full cooperation with the appropriate Dutch authorities and will
continue to do so in the future," said airline spokesman Nachman Klieman.
-
- But the Dutch parliamentary inquiry,
which opens later this month, was demanded by legislator Rob van Gijzel
because, despite repeated requests for full disclosure of the cargo, documents
are still lacking for 20 of the 114 tons of freight.
-
- A full report on the medical study is
expected early next year, and those complaining of ill health in the crash
aftermath hope to learn more from the inquiry that might help their doctors
determine the source of their illnesses.
-
- "I'm very hopeful we can do something
for these people, but not in the blind," said Ijzermans, the physician.
"It's just a pity that this inquiry is coming so late."
-
- ___________
-
- Berlin Bureau Chief Williams was recently
on assignment in Amsterdam.
-
- Copyright 1998 Los Angeles Times. All
Rights Reserved
-
-
- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information
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go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
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