"Lost In Time: 10,000 B.C.E."
Introducing Flight Attendant Harry Timms:The airliner traveling northward from Los Angeles, California, had been making good time with a fortunate tailwind. It looked as though the flight would reach Seattle, Washington, a good 10 minutes before its advertised arrival time of 11:52pm, which pleased not just the 215 passengers but the 2 pilots and 3 flight attendants as well.
Then, without any prior signs of issues, the jet's electrical power simply went out: no explosions, no sparks, no clanking or grinding or cracking to be heard. In an instant, the interior of the plane was darker than the outside of it, which was lightly illuminated by the stars and moon here above the clouds.
The pilots found themselves further hampered by the unexplainable failure of anything and everything that might provide them alternative light: headset and handheld flashlights, emergency lamps on the bulkheads, and even cell phones and tablets were dead. It was suddenly as if artificial light had never been invented ... which, of course, the crew and passengers would later find out was far truer than they could have imagined.
As the engines failed, the crew found themselves lucky to be in this particular model of aircraft in two respects: first, the flight controls had been designed to take a default position in the event of a total power loss that would maintain the slowest rate of descent; and second, the steering controls could be operated via manual hydraulics from the cockpit. Sure, they were sluggish and without delicate adjustments, but the result was that the flight crew was able to use the natural light on this cloudless night to direct the craft enough to prevent a total disaster.
In the end, the pilots avoided a forested ridge that would have meant total disaster and brought their plane down on a relatively flat piece of land. Here, there was mostly tall grasses, low shrubbery, shallow wetlands, and only a few tall trees. A lone member of that latter type of flora was the cause of the first serious damage to the plane as a lone tree on the left side violently severed that side's wing from the fuselage. The craft pulled to the left and rolled downward on the right enough to dig the tip of the right wing into a shallow bog, ripping that wing off as well.
The body of the jet continued forward as the right wing exploded, thankfully far enough behind it as to not burn the passengers in their seats. As the fuselage continued sliding across the soft earth, it came to a violent and deadly stop when the nose directly struck the trunk of a centuries old tree. The cockpit was crushed against the immovable object, killing both pilots and the senior flight attendant, who had been in the cockpit at the beginning of the disaster chatting up the man and woman flying the plane.
Harry Timms was one of two surviving flight attendants and had been sitting on the starboard side of the plane, which was now of course the
floor of the aircraft. He had come out of the wreck relatively unscathed, with only minor cuts and scratches from debris that had flown through the air, striking him about the skull, face, and legs. He unbuckled from his seat and immediately went to check on the flight crew. Both the pilot and co-pilot had been horrifically crushed and his supervisor on the attendant crew had had her head nearly cut off.
Harry didn't waste time in sorrow there, instead heading aft to check on his second team mate and the passengers. He found himself rather shocked -- thankfully -- to find most of the passengers still alive and only minorly injured. He looked about for fire and saw none; he checked the dangerous/flammable fume indicators -- which didn't require electricity or batteries -- and again found no signs of danger.
"Okay, listen up!" he called out over the mayhem of cries, sobs, and other signs of fear and hurt. "We need to get everyone out of the aircraft. If you are not injured, please help those who are. If you are injured, let your neighbors know."
There were a couple of dozen people at least who were still buckled in their seats and -- if on the craft's port side -- were dangling in the air. Harry organized some of the stronger and/or taller passengers to aid them in getting safely out of their seats. The other survivors began making their way to the aft of the jet where the tail had been ripped off and offered a large gap to allow escape.
It took almost an hour to get all of the survivors out of the plane. Someone with some outdoor survival skills had used the nearby fuel fire to create a trio of fire torches to illuminate the wreckage's interior. With them, Harry and his flight attendant teammate,
Connie Flanagan, along with a handful of volunteers searched through the plane for blankets, pillows, coats and other cold weather clothing, food, and water. They tried to be respectful of the privacy of the passengers' carryon luggage, but privacy rated a distant second to ensuring the survivors were warm, dry, and relatively comfortable.
In addition to the torches, the fuel fire led to the building of not just one but three fires nearer to the plane, fueled by gathered wood, brush, and grass. As the survivors settled in on the ground -- some of them using cushions from the plane's seats -- food, water, and a plastic container of little bottles of alcohol was distributed to keep minds off the tragedy just a little bit.
"I need everyone to find a place around one of the fires and sit and stay where they are," Harry told the group once everyone was out of the wreckage. "I found the passenger manifest, and I want to check the lot of you against it."
He and Connie set about circling the fires, asking names, and checking them off. In the cases of injured or incoherent passengers, they checked for IDs. They asked about injuries and -- with the great fortune of having a medical doctor, a registered nurse, and a retired Navy corpsman amongst the survivors -- began tending to the physical results of the crash as best they could. More than two dozen passengers and three crew had been killed during the crash itself, and an equal number would die of their injuries over the next 48 hours.
In the end, 150 people would survive the crash.
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