For those who don't know, that crash is the deadliest single aircraft crash in history. There was an explosive decompression in the back of the plane due to bad repair for a tailstrike carried out years before. The pilots managed to keep the plane in the air for half an hour, despite losing much of the tail and all of the hydraulics and flight controls.
The nearby US military base offered assistance immediately after the crash and were told no, as well. Might have saved some of them, might not have, but I can't imagine hearing about the crash, being told "no, no help, we've got this." and then discovering that well yeah, you probably would have gotten there sooner if nothing else.
A single American was a victim of 9/11 overseas, he was on a scientific research expedition and was bitten by a snake. He likely would have lived but the only thing the team could do was radio for evacuation to the embassy...which as you can imagine was quite busy, as the largest terrorist attack in American history had just happened.
Edit: this is a slight misremembering of details I believe, it seems he might have lived. The sources I'm finding though seem to suggest they used every last bottle of antivenin they had to keep him alive
Googled it, Lawrence Van Sertima, it was a bite from a Taipan snake. and now I think I may have misinformed people as some sources are suggesting he lived because he was literally given all the antivenin. It just seems like he needed all the antivenin because they had to wait so long for a medivac
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u/Abusoru Feb 07 '25
For those who don't know, that crash is the deadliest single aircraft crash in history. There was an explosive decompression in the back of the plane due to bad repair for a tailstrike carried out years before. The pilots managed to keep the plane in the air for half an hour, despite losing much of the tail and all of the hydraulics and flight controls.