The crash of TransAsia Airways Flight GE235 into the Keelung River (基隆河) in Taipei’s Nangang District (南港) yesterday was captured on camcorders mounted in cars, which showed the horrifying final seconds of the plane as its left wing brushed the top of an elevated expressway and a taxi before plunging into the river.
The disaster occurred just before noon, and videos and photographs captured by vehicles and people traveling on the expressway in eastern Taipei were quickly uploaded to YouTube and other social media Web sites.
Dramatic pictures posted by one driver showed the plummeting ATR-72 turboprop aircraft flying on its side with its wings at almost 90o to the ground.
Photo: Screen grab from Twitter
The plane appeared to miss apartment buildings by meters. Footage showed a taxi skidding to a halt on the damaged overpass with small pieces of the aircraft scattered along the road.
The taxi suffered substantial damage to its front end. The taxi driver, surnamed Chou (周), and a female passenger sustained only minor injuries.
Chou said his family did not believe him at first when he telephoned home to say: “I’m OK now. My car got into a crash, it was hit by an airplane.”
Photo courtesy of the Taipei City Police Department
A man surnamed Hsieh (謝) uploaded a video to YouTube (http://youtu.be/eJNAx4BsUtE), saying it came from a camera in a friend’s car.
The terrified reaction of a female passenger can be heard, as she shouts: “Oh, my god” several times.
A security guard surnamed Kao (高) in a nearby building said he could not believe what had happened.
Photo courtesy of the Taipei City Police Department
“I climbed to the rooftop to see the broken-up aircraft in the river,” he said. “It looked like a scene from a Hollywood disaster movie. I cannot forget those dreadful images.”
One witness said the airplane came down between high-rise buildings and that it looked as if the pilot rolled the aircraft to avoid hitting the buildings.
“If it had not hit the expressway, the airplane could have landed on the river. Then we might not have such heavy casualties,” the witness said.
An electrician surnamed Lee (李) doing repair work nearby saw the crash unfold.
“The engine sound got louder. I thought it was a helicopter. Then the airplane, leaving a trail of smoke, plunged into the river. It was so shocking that I dropped the whole wiring bundle on the floor, because I could not stop trembling,” he said.
Cheng Yi-nan (城益男), a security guard at a nearby building, said he heard a roaring sound, followed by a loud bang, then smelled oil burning.
“I thought there was a fire, but later on, we heard news reports of the air crash,” he said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has