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Grieving Relatives ID Greece Crash Victims
By ELENA BECATOROS
AP Online; Aug 15, 2005
Grieving relatives, many black-clad and weeping, arrived at a central
Athens morgue Monday by bus, taxi or on foot to try to identify the
remains of some of the 121 people _ including 10 families _ killed
in Greece's worst plane crash.
A young woman, eyes shaded by dark sunglasses, slumped to the ground
outside the building in the hospital complex, her head in her hands.
An elderly couple embraced as they got off the bus that took them
straight from Athens airport to the morgue. Two men helped a woman
toward an area set aside for the victims' relatives as her cries
echoed around the hospital courtyard.
"What can I say? I have no words to say because I lost my whole
brother's family, two kids and my brother and ... his wife," said
Albert Toutounzian at Larnaca Airport before boarding a flight
for Athens.
Hagop Toutounzian, 51, his 45-year-old wife Hilda and their two
sons, 12-year-old Bariet and 16-year-old Ara, were on the Cypriot
government's official list of victims from Sunday's crash of Helios
Airways flight ZU522.
The bodies recovered from the crash site on the slopes of a mountainous
region north of Athens were initially taken to a morgue in an eastern
Athens suburb. From there, those which authorities believed could be
identified by relatives were ferried in ambulances to the morgue in
the hospital complex in central Athens.
A brush fire sparked by the crash burned through much of the plane's
debris, strewn across two ravines and surrounding slopes, charring
many bodies beyond recognition.
Those would be identified by DNA tests and other forensic methods,
and would remain in the mortuary in eastern Athens, Greece's Deputy
Health Minister Thanassis Yiannopoulos said.
"This is the hardest part of the tragedy," Yiannopoulos said.
In the central Athens morgue, orderlies could be seen dragging body
bags, some bloodstained, from the ambulances and into the building
before relatives were taken in.
Officials said only 24 had been identified by Tuesday night.
The room in which the identification was taking place was small, and it
was taking time for the relatives to file through, said Eleni Antoniou,
a Cypriot coroner who was part of a Cypriot medical delegation that
traveled to Athens.
"Only five or six relatives enter the room at a time and this is a
very slow process," she told Cyprus Antenna TV. "Identification is
very difficult because of the state of the bodies."
At the crash site near the village of Grammatiko, north of Athens,
a firefighter described a scene of devastation.
"It was pretty grim down there," said the firefighter, who would not
give his name because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
"There were lots of body parts and I saw a severed head by itself."
Some angry relatives blamed the airline for the crash.
"Those who put profit above the lives of people must be punished,"
said Takis Mavris, whose brother, Andreas Christodoulou Mavris _
a soccer player well-known in Cyprus in the late 1970s and early
1980s _ was killed along with his wife.
"If these people from Helios come here and see what we have seen ..."
he said outside the morgue, his sentence trailing off. He said he
had been unable to identify his brother among the bodies he saw.
In Cyprus, the mayors of Nicosia and several towns gathered in the
capital's central square for a remembrance ceremony. Hundreds of
people joined them in a spontaneous show of solidarity, lighting
candles that flickered in the night on sidewalks and the city's 16th
century Venetian walls.
A 40-day mourning period was declared in Paralymni, a Cypriot town
of about 10,000 that lost at least 12 of its residents in the crash.
The Helios Airways flight had been heading from Larnaca to Athens
and was to have continued on to Prague, Czech Republic.
The passengers and crew included at least 12 Greeks and the German
pilot, and a four-member family of Armenian origin. The rest were
Cypriot.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
By ELENA BECATOROS
AP Online; Aug 15, 2005
Grieving relatives, many black-clad and weeping, arrived at a central
Athens morgue Monday by bus, taxi or on foot to try to identify the
remains of some of the 121 people _ including 10 families _ killed
in Greece's worst plane crash.
A young woman, eyes shaded by dark sunglasses, slumped to the ground
outside the building in the hospital complex, her head in her hands.
An elderly couple embraced as they got off the bus that took them
straight from Athens airport to the morgue. Two men helped a woman
toward an area set aside for the victims' relatives as her cries
echoed around the hospital courtyard.
"What can I say? I have no words to say because I lost my whole
brother's family, two kids and my brother and ... his wife," said
Albert Toutounzian at Larnaca Airport before boarding a flight
for Athens.
Hagop Toutounzian, 51, his 45-year-old wife Hilda and their two
sons, 12-year-old Bariet and 16-year-old Ara, were on the Cypriot
government's official list of victims from Sunday's crash of Helios
Airways flight ZU522.
The bodies recovered from the crash site on the slopes of a mountainous
region north of Athens were initially taken to a morgue in an eastern
Athens suburb. From there, those which authorities believed could be
identified by relatives were ferried in ambulances to the morgue in
the hospital complex in central Athens.
A brush fire sparked by the crash burned through much of the plane's
debris, strewn across two ravines and surrounding slopes, charring
many bodies beyond recognition.
Those would be identified by DNA tests and other forensic methods,
and would remain in the mortuary in eastern Athens, Greece's Deputy
Health Minister Thanassis Yiannopoulos said.
"This is the hardest part of the tragedy," Yiannopoulos said.
In the central Athens morgue, orderlies could be seen dragging body
bags, some bloodstained, from the ambulances and into the building
before relatives were taken in.
Officials said only 24 had been identified by Tuesday night.
The room in which the identification was taking place was small, and it
was taking time for the relatives to file through, said Eleni Antoniou,
a Cypriot coroner who was part of a Cypriot medical delegation that
traveled to Athens.
"Only five or six relatives enter the room at a time and this is a
very slow process," she told Cyprus Antenna TV. "Identification is
very difficult because of the state of the bodies."
At the crash site near the village of Grammatiko, north of Athens,
a firefighter described a scene of devastation.
"It was pretty grim down there," said the firefighter, who would not
give his name because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
"There were lots of body parts and I saw a severed head by itself."
Some angry relatives blamed the airline for the crash.
"Those who put profit above the lives of people must be punished,"
said Takis Mavris, whose brother, Andreas Christodoulou Mavris _
a soccer player well-known in Cyprus in the late 1970s and early
1980s _ was killed along with his wife.
"If these people from Helios come here and see what we have seen ..."
he said outside the morgue, his sentence trailing off. He said he
had been unable to identify his brother among the bodies he saw.
In Cyprus, the mayors of Nicosia and several towns gathered in the
capital's central square for a remembrance ceremony. Hundreds of
people joined them in a spontaneous show of solidarity, lighting
candles that flickered in the night on sidewalks and the city's 16th
century Venetian walls.
A 40-day mourning period was declared in Paralymni, a Cypriot town
of about 10,000 that lost at least 12 of its residents in the crash.
The Helios Airways flight had been heading from Larnaca to Athens
and was to have continued on to Prague, Czech Republic.
The passengers and crew included at least 12 Greeks and the German
pilot, and a four-member family of Armenian origin. The rest were
Cypriot.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress