Plane Crash Victims Suffering From Paralysis, ‘Severe Road Rash’
Asiana Airlines plane crash victims are suffering from injuries that range from “severe road rash” to paralysis, according to doctors. While 123 passengers walked away from the crash landing, 182 people were hospitalized and two died.
The Boeing 777 crash landed at San Francisco International Airport Saturday afternoon after it appeared to hit a seawall. The airplane rotated counterclockwise and came to a stop.
Dr. Margaret Knudson, San Francisco General Hospital’s chief of surgery, explained, “We were expecting a lot of burns. But we didn’t see them.”
Nineteen plane crash victims remained at San Francisco General on Sunday, six in critical condition. Knudson explained that many of those injured were sitting toward the back of Asiana Airlines Flight 214.
She added that abdominal injuries, spine fractures, and head trauma have been the most prevalent injuries. Some of the spine fractures have resulted in paralysis. Many patients were also treated for what Knudson called “severe road rash,” suggesting “that they were dragged.”
While victims of the terrifying plane crash recover in the hospital, officials announced that the two dead passengers were 16-year-old girls from China. Wang Linjia and Ye Mengyuan were part of a student group from Jiangshan Middle School in the country’s eastern Zhejiang province.
Knudson also commended emergency responders, who were able to perform triage once passengers were outside of the crashed plane. She stated that without their help, she “didn’t think they would have survived.”
Doctors believe they have only been treating passengers from the crash. However, many of them have not yet been identified. Because of this, Dr. Knudson suggested that some of the patients may have been flight attendants for Asiana.
Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board recovered the plane’s black boxes, which were sent to Washington, D.C., for analysis. The group has not yet spoken with the pilot of the crashed plane. The NTSB is working with Boeing, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Korean Air and Accident Investigation Board to discover what caused the deadly plane crash.
