Asiana Crash Survivor Describes Caring for Injured Passengers

A survivor of Saturday’s plane crash at San Francisco International Airport described Tuesday what he experienced in the moments following the crash landing of Asiana Airlines Flight 214.

 

Elliot Stone, a martial arts teacher from Scotts Valley, was traveling with a group that included several of his family members, fiancé Elena Jin, father Walter Stone, mother Cindy Stone and brother Oliver Stone, as well as travel companions Brian Thomson and David Schimmel.

 

After safely exiting the plane and reuniting with his group, he described seeing that the back end of the plan was 500 yards down by the seawall. Stone said he and his father went to the back where they witnessed several people bleeding and badly injured.

 

“We found four people in the back in the rubble in very bad condition,” he said. “[We] found those four people, we stayed with them, hung out with them, comforted them. Just yelling, yelling for ambulances, fire trucks, anyone to come help. We had to end up calling 911 because we weren’t getting immediate response there. So we just tried to stay with them and do the best we could do." 

 

Stone said he called 911 after 25 minutes of waiting for first responders to provide aid to the area near the back of plane where he and his father were attending to the injured.

 

“We called 911 25 minutes after the plane crashed,” Elliot Stone said. “I would say it was a good 10 to 15 minutes until we got someone to help with us in the back, but again, we don’t know what they were dealing with. We were just in our own little situation and just trying to do the best we could, yelling for help.”

 

Stone’s father described how they did their best to provide comfort to the victims. “The injuries were significant, but we’re not medical technicians. There was lots of blood, very significant injuries, and we tried to comfort them the best we could, talk to them, keep them breathing, keep them conscious until qualified personnel got there.”