A tragic plane crash, the personal stories of its fatalities and survivors, and the subsequent investigation to try to find out what really happened while the authorities try to hide information. It could be a fictional series but in the case of the Dutch miniseries The Crash -which arrives tonight on the Cosmo channel starting at 10pm- it is not. It is the reconstruction of the most serious air disaster in the Netherlands, when on October 4, 1992 a Boeing 747 of the Israeli airline El Al coming from New York and bound for Tel Aviv, after a technical stop at the Amsterdam airport. Schiphol crashed into the iconic Bijlmer building, an 11-story building located in the Bijlmermeer neighborhood of the same name, where most of its residents are immigrants
Fortunately the plane was a cargo plane and therefore the number of fatalities was reduced to 43 people. The vast majority of them, 39, were residents of the building and the rest, three crew members and a passenger who were traveling on the plane. That is the official figure because, even today, the official number of victims is questioned since many undocumented immigrants lived in that neighborhood, one of the most marginal areas of the city that the Dutch government did not pay much attention to their crime problems.
Based on real events, people and data, The Crash approaches a still open wound in the collective memory of the Netherlands that still has some unresolved questions. Threatened citizens, segregated aid, a black box that has not yet been found, undeclared illnesses or insurance companies that pay claims based on people’s educational level are some of the shocking details revealed in the series. In addition, it is remembered that the government documents that reveal the truth of the accident were kept under lock and key until 2062.
“The shocking conclusion of this story is that, to this day, our government has never admitted its mistakes. That the truth has not yet come to light, ”denounces Michael Leendertset, creator and screenwriter of the series. “This story has fascinated me for years: it is an unforgettable part of our history with international appeal and a mystery that is still talked about today. As a screenwriter, I asked myself: how do I turn this real tragedy, with its characters and theories, into a dramatic series that does justice to the survivors and dares to tell the truth?”, reveals Leendertset about the origin of the series.
Among the mysteries surrounding the crash, the one that raised the most controversy was what kind of cargo the plane was actually carrying. Initially, the authorities claimed that it was only perfume, flowers and computer parts. But as the survivors and rescue personnel began to fall ill with respiratory ailments, insomnia, stomach problems, and pain or general malaise, suspicions were raised and some hypotheses pointed out that these pathologies showed that the plane had to carry a chemical military cargo on board. .
The series, which consists of five episodes and which the public channel NPO 1 in the Netherlands premiered last year coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the accident, follows the journalistic investigation that uncovered how the Dutch government, in addition to committing some negligence, hid information the public, intimidating and deceiving many people so as not to reveal the truth. The Crash shows how the survivors (played in the series as Asha, a neighbor from Bijlmer) tried to shed some light on this catastrophe with the help of two real journalists: Vincent Dekker and Pierre Heijboer. Dekker himself has participated in the development of the series by advising Leendertset.
The joint work of the journalists and the survivors, silenced for years, forced the government to revise its own conclusions on several occasions. In 1998, a parliamentary inquiry revealed that information about exactly what had happened to the plane had disappeared, and he denounced irregularities during the investigation and salvage of the Boeing 747 wreckage.
The NRC Handelsblad newspaper also noted that the plane was carrying 240 kilograms of raw material to make sarin gas, according to part of the cargo documents that disappeared after the tragedy. Likewise, it was speculated that the aircraft was carrying war material and other independent investigations ensured that it was radioactive material. In October 1993, the Laka Foundation’s research on nuclear energy reported that the tail of the plane contained depleted uranium to balance the center of gravity of the device, like all Boeing 747 planes at the time, a fact that was not known for the rescue and recovery of the aircraft wreckage.
