Coroner IDs Asiana flight fire truck victim

The San Mateo County Coroner in San Francisco identified Tuesday the girl who is at the center of an investigation into whether a fire truck inadvertently killed one of the victims of crashed Asiana Flight 214.

Coroner's investigators told the parents of 16-year-old Ye Mengyuan from Zhejiang Province that she was the girl who may have been hit by a fire rig, County Coroner Robert Foucrault said.

Ye's parents flew into San Francisco International Airport late Monday along with the parents of the other girl killed in Saturday's crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214, Ye's close friend Wang Linjia, also 16.

The parents met with coroner's officials shortly after landing, Foucrault said, adding that they asked which of their daughters was possibly struck by the fire truck. "The answer was Ye," he said.

"We told them that we're still looking into it," Foucrault said.

Ye's body was found near the front of the jet's left wing. Wang's was found near the seawall that the jet struck as it landed short of the runway.

Both girls are believed to have been sitting at the back of the plane. The tail broke off on impact, and investigators theorize that Wang fell out, as did two flight attendants who were seriously injured.

Foucrault said autopsy results on Ye will not be known for two to three weeks.

Bill Hutfilz, a 40-year veteran airfield firefighter who is the training officer for McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas said that speed and visibility could have led to the incident.

At least two of the rigs, according to amateur video, rushed to the scene early. They drove around the wreck, and appeared to spray foam from the right side.

Visibility was also a problem for the pilots of the jetliner, as they couldn't see the runway just seconds earlier, given how far the plane was out of position, investigators said Tuesday.

Three of Asiana Flight 214's four pilots have been interviewed, said National Transportation Safety Board chair Deborah Hersman, who described their attempt to avert disaster.

"The pilot that was sitting in the jump seat, the relief first officer, identified that he could not see the runway ... from his seated position. And that the aircraft, the nose was pitched up, so he couldn't see the runway," Hersman said. The accident happened just seconds later, when at an altitude of only 500 feet (152 meters) the instructor pilot "realized they were too low." "He went to push the throttles forward, but he stated that the pilot had already ... pushed the throttles forward," said Hersman.

The pilot at the controls, Lee Kang-kuk, was around halfway through his training for the Boeing 777.

San Francisco General Hospital said Tuesday that five crash victims remain critical.

Global Times - Agencies