Ukraine Villagers Near Malaysia Airlines Crash Site Feel Abandoned & Overwhelmed
After Flight 17 Crash, Agony, Debris and Heartbreak in Ukraine Villages
Villagers Near Malaysia Airlines Crash Site Feel Abandoned and Overwhelmed
Paul Sonne,
Margaret Coker and
Alexander Kolyandr
July 25, 2014 8:45 p.m. ET
PETROPAVLIVKA, Ukraine—Even before Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down, the war raging between Ukraine and pro-Russia rebels created crushing challenges for the mayor of this small, worn-down village.
Natalya Voloshina couldn't pay municipal salaries, pensions or energy bills because money from the central government in Kiev was frozen. The coal mine where her husband and high-school sweetheart works largely shut down. The fighting was creeping closer.
Then the plane crashed. The cabin's second-row overhead compartment is in a tree across from the village hall—and suitcases and clothes are in backyards and gardens of square-windowed cottages.
Villagers dashed into their basements, fearing a bomb attack. Residents in a nearby village ran for the church, certain that the world was coming to an end. A colleague of Ms. Voloshina screamed after being nearly hit by the plane's cargo hold. Days later, the 43-year-old mayor found the bottom half of a man's body in the shrubs next to her office. She has barely slept since then.
"I know that for others I need to look strong, assured and composed," says Ms. Voloshina, her hands still trembling a week after the July 17 crash. "But when I'm not at work, I cry at home into my pillow."
Flight 17 has gripped the world because of the deaths of 298 passengers and crew on the Boeing 777 and the geopolitical crisis triggered by the crash. But the disaster also includes the horror that has paralyzed three Ukrainian villages about 30 miles from the border with Russia. After the plane fell to earth, almost no one came to their rescue.
While most of the bodies have been removed from the crash site, the roughly 6,500 residents of the villages remain traumatized by what they saw, trapped by debris and passengers' belongings scattered across the local landscape. Pieces of other people's lives haunt their own.
The plane's cockpit and dozens of bodies plummeted into Rozsypne, about 2 miles from Petropavlivka. One body fell through a woman's roof. A pilot strapped to a seat wound up next to a flight attendant in a nearby field.
Charred remains of an engine, landing gear and wings fell in a fireball next to Hrabove, with a tumbling storm cloud of at least 70 bodies, some of them largely intact.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/after-flight-17-crash-agony-debris-and-heartbreak-in-ukraine-villages-1406335532?KEYWORDS=MH17+paul
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