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runway, following at top speed, tires screaming. Two yellow foam trucks were the first to move, the other fire trucks close behind . On the runway, as the airplane's landing gear made contact with the ground, another right-side tire exploded, then another. Suddenly all right tires disintegrated . . . the wheels were down to their rims . Simultaneously there was a banshee screech of metal, a shower of sparks , and a cloud of dust and cement fragments rose into the air . . . Somehow , miraculously, the pilots managed to hold the Airbus on the runway . . . It seemed to continue a long way and for a long time . . . At last it stopped. As it did, the fire flared up . Still moving fast, the fire trucks closed in, within seconds pumping foam. Gigantic whorls of it piled up with incredible speed, like a mountain of shave cream. On the airplane, several passenger doors were opening, escape slides tumbling out. The forward door was open on the right side, but on that side fire was blocking the mid-fuselage exits. On the left side, away from the fire, another forward door and a mid-fuselage door were open . Some passengers were already coming down the slides . But at the rear, where there were two escape doors on each side, none had so far opened . Through the three open doors, smoke from inside the airplane was pouring out. Some passengers were already on the ground. The latest ones emerged coughing, many vomiting, all gasping for fresh air . By now the exterior fire was dying down under a mass of foam on one side of the airplane . Firemen from the RIV's, wearing silver protective clothing and breathing apparatus, had swiftly moved in and rigged ladders to the unopened rear doors. As the doors were opened manually from outside, more smoke poured out. The firemen hurried inside, intent on extinguishing any interior fire. Other firemen, entering the wrecked Airbus through the forward doors, helped passengers to leave, some of them dazed and weak . Noticeably, the outward flow of passengers slowed. Harry Partridge made a quick estimate that nearly two hundred people had emerged from the plane's interior, though from the information he had gathered he knew that 297, including crew, were reportedly aboard. Firemen began to carry some who appeared badly burned-among them two women flight attendants . Smoke was still drifting from inside, though less of it than earlier . Minh Van Canh continued to videotape the action around him, thinking only professionally, excluding other thoughts, though aware that he was the only cameraman on the scene and in his camera he had something special and unique. Probably not since the Hindenburg airship disaster had a major air crash been recorded visually in such detail, while it happened . Ambulances had been summoned to the on-site command post. A dozen were already th ere, with more arriving. Param edics worked on the injured, loading them onto numbered backboards. Within minutes the crash victims would be on their way to area hospitals alerted to receive them. With the arrival of a helicopter bringing doctors and nurses, the command post near the Airbus was becoming an improvised field hospital with a functioning triage system . The speed with which everything was happening spoke well, Partridge thought, of the airport's emergency planning. He overheard the fire captain report that a hundred and ninety passengers, more or less, were out of the Airbus and alive. At the same time that left nearly a hundred unaccounted for . A fireman, pulling off his respirator to wipe the sweat from his face , was heard to say, "Oh Christ! The back seats are chock full of dead. It must have been where the smoke was thickest .”
    It also explained why the four rear escape doors had not been opened from inside . As always with an aircraft accident, the dead would be left where they were until a National Transportation Safety Board field officer , reportedly on the way, gave authority to move them after approving