— It began like any other Saturday, until the 11:27 a.m. call came in.
For the fire crews who staff the "crash house" at San Francisco International Airport, emergencies usually entail a malfunctioning plane light or a minor problem with a wing flap. But when Lt. Christine Emmons heard the tone of the dispatcher's voice — "Alert 3, alert 3, plane crash, plane crash" — she knew this one was different.
"The event we were going to was real," said Emmons, one of several first responders who were close to tears Monday as they shared tales of their race to save passengers and crew from the burning wreckage of Asiana Airlines Flight 214.
As the drama unfolded, firefighters ran up one of the aircraft's inflated escape chutes to get to those trapped inside. A police officer without protective gear joined them, entering through the breached tail section and clearing a passage by tossing out luggage and wrecked overhead bins. Inside the plane, a female flight attendant was working frantically to free passengers and co-workers.
All the while, jet fuel streamed off the wing.
Battling fire, smoke, inflated chutes
As soon as the alert reached the firehouse, Emmons suited up and raced with a driver to runway 28L. They were spraying foam on the wreckage when another engine arrived to help.
Most of the 307 passengers and crew already had made their way out. They were wandering nearby or lying on the heat-blistered grass. The first priority was to ensure no one else was inside. Emmons and Lt. Dave Monteverdi repositioned their trucks.
"I saw Dave run up the chute of the aircraft," Emmons recounted with a slight shake in her voice. "I said if he can do it, I can do it."
Monteverdi headed to check the cockpit, and Emmons and firefighter Mike Kirk went the other way. Kirk was first to reach the rear of the plane, where the tail gash showed the light of day. That's where he found five injured passengers, several pinned by debris.
Meanwhile, "the fire was banking down on us," Emmons said. "We had heavy black smoke."
Attending to the injured even before first responders arrived was Lee Yoon-hye, the cabin manager. After checking to see that the four pilots were alive, the 40-year-old flight attendant — who has worked for Asiana for 18 years — began helping with the evacuation. It did not go smoothly.
The slide on the first right-hand exit had inflated inward, pinning another flight attendant and nearly suffocating her, Lee said. One pilot rushed into the cockpit to get a "crash ax" to deflate the slide as Lee led passengers off the plane through doors on the left.
She continued toward the rear, evacuating people through other exits. But flames erupted near Row 10, and Lee heard screams for help. A second slide, also on the right, had inflated inward near the fire, pinning a colleague's leg.
"I grabbed a knife passengers had eaten with from a cart and handed it to the copilot," Lee said in Korean. "He punctured it."
The flight attendant was the last crew member to leave the plane, exiting only when it seemed like the top of the cabin was falling in and the rear of the plane was obscured in black smoke.
She later discovered that the initial impact had left her with a broken tailbone.
Meanwhile, firefighters had gotten to the rear of the craft and were helping the injured when they noticed San Francisco Police Officer Jim Cunningham — with no mask and no safety gear — right there beside them.
He had arrived as passengers were coming down the chutes and, along with another officer, tossed his knife to two of the cockpit crew working furiously to free passengers. When he looked through the tail gash, he saw that firefighters needed help. So he began grabbing bags from the collapsed luggage compartments, panels of the plane — "whatever I could to get myself inside there."
"I thought I was a tough guy and that I could hold my breath," he said when asked why he took the risk. But as he and Emmons carried the last passenger out on a backboard, "I started coughing," Cunningham said. "We were trying to hold on to the person with the board and trying not to drop him. The smoke was thick and black and swirling around us."
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