This is an article written by a journalist. "Journalists write things that should be devoured like cakes, right out of the oven" (Edmundo About). The furnace to which I refer was turned on and off on 27 March 1977 and left 583 dead. Forty-seven years have passed.
Memory is scattered by the intricacies of time. Only an intentional memory, such as this one, enlivens it. But, in any case, I am doing an exercise in memory, which is therefore much milder than an exercise in scientific accuracy. Among other things because, I repeat, I am a journalist; that is to say, a man who knows everything, but really knows nothing.
Narrated with the perspective of half a century ago, this report aims to bring to light the consequences, unknown to the general public, of an event that shocked world public opinion. The crash of the Pan American and KLM Boeing 747s at Tenerife/Los Rodeos airport on the fateful afternoon of 27 March 1977.
Strange interest
Curiously enough, after the accidental discovery of a piece of debris, supposedly from one of the crashed planes, near the Geneto runwayhead of the aforementioned airport, there has recently been another demand for reports on that event.
On the other hand, the great globalised archive that is the Internet helps to cast more light and shadows on the aforementioned aircraft crash on the ground, which occurred, like all aviation mishaps - this one was really more of a traffic accident - after an unfortunate and bizarre accumulation of adverse circumstances.
In other words, there was not just one culprit, but many, although the greatest degree of responsibility, according to the investigation and the official report, fell on the commander. Van Zantena proud KLM instructor who, fatigued by long hours at the controls of his plane and the tedious wait on the ground, took off without the required clearance from the control tower, even though he thought he had it.
Such was his prestige at KLM that when the news of the accident reached the company's headquarters in Amsterdam, a manager ordered: "Tell Van Zanten at once!", without realising that it was the company's most experienced commander who had caused the tragedy.
Without wishing to intentionally lengthen this introduction, I must explain that I was an eyewitness to a large part of the events that took place on 27 March. I was probably also the first journalist to arrive at Los Rodeos after the crash; and I was almost certainly the first reporter to take pictures of the crash, perched on the masonry fence that borders the Los Rodeos airport area, pictures that found their way to the Los Angeles Times.
As a witness to a tragedy that cost 583 victims among passengers and crew, I may know many things, but the years that have passed since that day place before me a cloud of even greater density than those that prevented the pilots from seeing the runway 3,400 metres long and 45 metres wide at Los Rodeos airport, near the 3-0 headland.
The "other" danger
When I crossed that fence to see the horror and report the facts, before the civil guards invited me to leave the scene of the collision, I could not have imagined that another danger was looming over all of us.
Among the charred wreckage of those planes, and more specifically among the burning components of their huge wings, a potential tragedy was brewing, greater than the one that was unfolding before my eyes, which has come to light years later, although its exact consequences can never be assessed. This is already an impossible task, because almost fifty years have passed since the accident.
It is true that in the newspaper The DayThanks to the investigations carried out in the warehouse of a Tenerife scrap merchant - where some of the wrecked aircraft ended up - by an old Tenerife chemist, "armed" with a Geiger counter, it was suggested that the jumbo jets that crashed at Los Rodeos were carrying uranium, The chronicles of the time referred to a possible smuggling of this material, as no other explanation occurred to the discoverer of the small, heavy bars found, nor to the journalist who wrote this report. Both are now deceased.
As a matter of personal biography, I was deputy editor of the newspaper that was his competitor, Diario de Avisosand, following up on the bold information published by the colleague, I did some research on the subject. I obtained precise data on the use of DU (depleted uranium) rods in the structures (as wing weights) of many of the 1,600 Boeing 747s manufactured up to that time for various airlines around the world, including Pan American. Hence the alteration in the old chemist's Geiger. But no, no uranium smuggling, nothing.
The survivors and rescue workers involved in the crash were in grave danger, as we shall see later. One website (the source, Private Eye number 1056) even states that a Spanish policeman who took part in the rescue work and attended to the survivors of the Pan Am plane died as a result of inhaling uranium particles.
Wartime uranium
It is true that a lot has happened in the almost half-century since then. The Gulf War, the Balkan conflict, the Iraq war, the Ukraine war and the recent war in Gaza. Weapons manufacturers seek ever more lethal materials so that the contenders can eliminate each other. It is the fate of humanity. It is about cheaper and lighter projectiles, capable of penetrating the armour of tanks and other enemy defences.
The world of armaments sells best when it makes it as effective as possible. Effectiveness is measured by the number of damage and death. They seem to revel in seeing their products cause more and more damage to their opponents in a mad race that seems to go on forever. Depleted uranium is also used in the manufacture of ammunition, especially for heavy weapons.
There has been talk at this time, then, of mysterious illnesses suffered by American soldiers who participated in the Gulf War and also by those enlisted in the losing Iraqi forces. Leukaemia rates increased in the military population who handled these new ammunition, these previously unknown projectiles. In the Ukrainian war there is again talk of the manufacture of ammunition composed in part of depleted uranium which, when exposed to excessive heat, releases dangerous particles. But let us return to the Los Rodeos accident.
I witnessed something so unusual in today's world and so common in the carefree world of half a century ago that it makes my hair stand on end. An employee representing Lloyd's insurance company in Tenerife, the insurer that paid compensation to the passengers and relatives of the crashed jumbo jets, was using one of the depleted uranium rods from one of the stricken planes as a paperweight in his office. I held the rod in my hand as I chatted with the representative of the Spanish nuclear authority who had come to Tenerife to investigate what had been found in the scrap dealer's warehouse. "Wash your hands thoroughly," he said, "and don't worry, because this material doesn't hurt when it's cold, but pray that you didn't inhale any burning particles from what you now have in your hand when you arrived on the runway where the two planes collided.
Renewed interest
When, some twenty years ago, I received a phone call from London from the assistant producer of a report by National Geographic - a society of which I am a member - on the jumbo jet crash, which was filmed in Tenerife and which was, and still is, an unusual success with viewers, I did not remember to tell him to look into the depleted uranium affair. But I did phone him a few days later to warn him: "What happened on 27 March was not a plane crash, but a traffic accident", I told him. And I added: "But in addition to the 583 deaths and the human tragedies experienced by the passengers, crew and relatives, there is also the issue of uranium".
My interlocutor then showed surprise and great interest in the story you are now reading.
It would not be faithful to the plot of this paper which, I repeat, is not a scientific article but a mere account of the facts and their possible consequences, if I did not quote different versions of the malignity of the DU, of its health repercussions at high temperatures and, of course, of its possible harmful effects for the hundreds of people in the emergency services and the survivors of Los Rodeos, for the inhabitants of the surrounding area and for those affected by the thirty or so accidents that have occurred in the long history of jumbo jets around the world.
Airlines such as the now defunct TWA, United, Delta, Pan Am, Northwest, American Airlines, Air Canada, Lufthansa, Air France, Alitalia, British Airways, Quantas, Air China, SAS and Swissair have carried depleted uranium rods in their jumbo jets. The more modern DC-10s have also carried them, as have older aircraft such as the Lokheed L-1011 and the Lokheed C-130 military aircraft.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has warned countries where aircraft have crashed and incorporated DU bars as counterweights into their fuselages to be particularly vigilant about the environment in which the crashes occurred and the people who were involved in the rescues and who live or have lived in the vicinity.
I do not know whether in the case of Spain (Los Rodeos accident, 1977; accident in Malaga of a Lockheed 1011; and accident of a DC-10, also in Malaga) the authorities paid attention to this recommendation. But the two planes that crashed at Los Rodeos, registration N736PA for the American and PH-BUF for the Dutch, were supposedly each carrying 1,500 kilos of depleted uranium in their huge wings.
Did anyone inform the people of Tenerife and especially those involved in the rescue of the surviving passengers, the fire brigade, members of the Red Cross, the Guardia Civil, the National Police, the medical services, etc. of the dangers they faced? This question has no answer and never, given the time that has elapsed since the events occurred, will have one.
What is depleted uranium (DU)?
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) depleted uranium is a by-product of the uranium enrichment process and its radioactivity is approximately 60% of that of natural uranium.
Fine DU particles ignite easily and produce oxides. The WHO itself recognises that inhaled DU dust can affect the health of populations in whose territorial areas anti-tank munitions have been used.
In one of its fact sheets, number 257 of January 2001, the WHO acknowledges that "DU weapons are considered conventional and are freely used by armed forces". The WHO also accepts that DU is used in aircraft counterweights, radiation shielding for radiotherapy services and for the transport of radioactive isotopes'.
The doctor Helen CaldicottThe Pentagon document states that uranium 238 (DU) contains "dangerous properties". It states that "it is pyrophoric, i.e. it ignites when it reaches its target, the armour of an enemy tank, for example, at high speed. The fire oxidises the uranium and even in a 70% it turns into volatile microscopic particles, so small that if inhaled after a light blizzard they lodge in the lungs for years'. And recently, junior Spanish researchers have discovered that remnants of the latest French nuclear explosions on several atolls in their domain are currently lingering in the atmosphere around the globe, although not in potentially harmful proportions.
A clear risk
No one, at least as far as is known and has been published, has carried out a medico-scientific study of what happened on the island of Tenerife after the accident of 27 March 1977.
Nor, as far as is known, has there been any monitoring of the health of those who suffered in the tragedy, nor of the current physical condition of those who are still alive and who helped the survivors get through the moment and put out the aircraft fires.
The incubation time for tumours caused by uranium 238 is between 5 and 60 years. 47 years have passed since those events. Forty-seven years have passed since then, what has happened and what can still happen?
Dr Caldicott, who is a member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation's Council in the United States, states that "it is almost certain that the cases of cancer found in NATO soldiers on peacekeeping missions in the Balkans, as well as among Gulf veterans, and indeed in civilians living in these countries, are just the tip of the iceberg". These theories are reinforced by bad news of various types of childhood cancer and congenital malformations in children born in both Iraq and the Balkans after the armed conflicts that ravaged these places.
Of course, the virulence of a war is not comparable to the more ephemeral but equally tragic virulence of a plane crash. But we should not forget that some 3,000 kilos of depleted uranium could have burned after the collision of the jumbo jets at Los Rodeos, if it is confirmed that the Dutch plane also had this counterweight system on its wings. Of course, the Pan Am did.
Evasions by the Spanish Government
The Spanish government, in a report issued around 2000, was quick to say that its armed forces do not have depleted uranium ammunition, nor have its soldiers been in areas where it has been used, such as Mostar (Bosnia) or Istok in Kosovo.
The Ministry of Defence insisted at the time that no causal link had so far been found between DU and the cases of leukaemia that had appeared in people who had been in Kosovo. It tried to reassure the armed forces with this deduction: 'The radiological risk of DU is low, because the radioactivity of this material is lower than natural radioactivity. DU can pose a radiological risk only in the case of prolonged epidermal contact with the pure product". When I read this I was reminded of the advice given to me by the representative of the Spanish Nuclear Energy Board in Tenerife: "Wash your hands well and do not touch it again, but pray that you have not inhaled any burning particles at the accident site".
The Spanish Ministry of Defence's deductions were more optimistic (reminding me of the Palomares event) than those of the Pentagon's experts and the most experienced researchers on the effects of DU on the world's population. The Spanish defence agency added that "50 years of industrial use of DU have not revealed any pathology (sic). So far, no harmful radiological effects have been found among workers in the uranium industry'.
But the repeatedly cited Spanish department does acknowledge that some cases of leukaemia have appeared in Spanish military personnel who for some time were stationed in the Balkans. Of the three deceased, one was in Bosnia in 1993, the second also served in Bosnia in 1999 and the third in Macedonia in 2000. Four other servicemen who served their country (Spain) in the Balkans also suffered from the disease. At the time of my research they were still alive, today, I do not know.
Back to the past
Jesús J. Lavín was on duty that Sunday 27 March 1977 at the Iberia Flight Operations Centre at Los Rodeos. He had the opportunity to chat with Commander Van Zanten, as he intervened in the dispatch of the two planes that were going to collide when he had already gone home at three in the afternoon, at the end of his shift.
By 17.30 Van Zanten was dead. He and 582 other people. Lavín, who was an interpreter for the American and Dutch commissions of enquiry into this accident, provides me with a note from the WHO.
The WHO, in this note (fact sheet 257 of January 2001), also downplays the effects of DU, although it is cautious and acknowledges that its knowledge of this type of uranium is incomplete. The World Health Organisation indicates that more research is needed. It adds: "In view of the remaining uncertainties about the effects of DU, it seems reasonable to initiate decontamination operations in impact areas where large numbers of radioactive particles are present. If very high DU concentrations are detected, it may be necessary to cordon off the areas until the particles are removed. This is particularly important if children are likely to be present in these areas.
About two years ago, one of those DU bars from the crash or falling to the ground from another aircraft was found half-buried near Los Rodeos 3-0. It was found by a neighbour, who alerted the Guardia Civil. As far as I know, the matter has not been discussed again. And the big question: Where are the DU rods that did not burn in the Los Rodeos accident now? Do those who can handle them know the risk involved? What happened to the scrap dealer and his dangerous goods?
Let's go back to Los Rodeos. Never before had such a combination of circumstances come together in such a serious accident. First, a MPAIAC (Movement for Self-Determination and Independence of the Canary Islands) bomb exploded at Gando airport, causing the two planes to be diverted to Tenerife airport. Second, the bad weather, which kept the Tenerife airport almost at a standstill. Third, the inadequate language used by the controller in charge of operations in the Tenerife-North tower, which the Dutch pilots apparently only half understood. Fourth, a small but fundamental interference in Dutch tower-to-aircraft communications. Fifth, an aircraft car park overloaded by traffic diverted to Los Rodeos. We must not forget the take-off without receiving clear and definitive clearance from the tower by the commander of the Dutch jumbo jet, nor the erratic flight of the American aircraft along the main runway due to the fog, ignoring the intersections.
Names for history
An air traffic controller who was probably not yet an air traffic controller when this happened, José Luis Sanz Santospublished an interesting article in the autumn of 2000 in ATC Magazine. It says: "Another of the anecdotes that feed the black legend of Los Rodeos is the one in which the commander of an aircraft, aware of the particularly changeable weather conditions at our airfield, addressed the passengers as follows: "This is the weather en route; the weather over Los Rodeos you will see as you pass...".
Neither the oft-cited Jacob Van Zanten nor his first officer, Klass Meursnor its flight engineer, William Schreuder lived to tell the tale. But the captain was able to do so. Victor GrubbsPan Am's commander, and his first officer Robert BraggI could see him, his uniform in tatters, covered in blood, his cap in his hand and his eyes lost, watching helplessly as his plane burned on the runway of the airport. 61 survivors out of 644 passengers, all the living occupants of the Pan Am jumbo jet, none from the Dutch plane.
A memory exercise
Those events come back to my mind today, just as I am recalling them in writing these lines, which I said at the beginning are not intended to be a scientific study, because I do not have that qualification.
I must insist on the fact that I intend to write the chronicle of what happened, and even of what could have happened afterwards, the account of the dangers to which those of us who were there were exposed, some saving lives, others dying slowly with our skin in tatters and fire in our bodies, others fulfilling our inevitable duty to inform, trying to appear immune to the Dantesque spectacle, without succeeding, of course. Although sometimes it may not seem so, we journalists have a heart.
Our task, on this and on so many other occasions, is not a pleasant one. Firstly, because we are haunted by the opinion of so many who, like the Unamuno, I have often stopped to reflect on how terrible for the life of the spirit is the profession of the journalist, obliged to compose his daily article and that nefarious cult of current affairs that has arisen from journalism. The daily informer does not have time to digest the very reports he provides," said the rector of Salamanca.
And then there is the ethical question. Many questions arose for me on 27 March: should I take pictures or try to help; should I publish images of deformed, burned and twisted bodies, is it newsworthy? I had several answers, the first being from an Associated Press photographer who came to the Diario de Avisos with a telephoto camera in his hand, ready to buy the graphics we offered him to send to a newspaper in Los Angeles, where the American plane's passage came from. "Not one of the dead, not one of the burned people, only of the wreckage," he told me. And so it happened, just as it did after the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York: no photos of dead or injured people appeared, only the inevitable ones of some who, in desperation, jumped from the windows of the buildings.
I do not have a clear answer to these questions. I am not a doctor, nor do I have the medical knowledge to attend to a wounded person without harming him, so it seems legitimate for me to devote myself to my work. And for the publication of the photos I went to my teacher, director of my doctoral thesis and my dean in the Faculty of Information Sciences at the Complutense University, Ángel Benito, former professor of Information Theory and Doctor of Law. He told me: "Anything that repels should not be published". It has been my professional maxim, after having made some mistakes in this respect, before receiving the advice of the master, of course.
None of us who went to cover that incident knew that beneath the obvious drama there was another real danger brewing, the consequences of which we have not finished, nor will we ever finish, assessing: 3,000 kilos of DU were burning at a temperature of more than 1,000 degrees, releasing extremely dangerous particles into the air.
Inevitable reflections
I have to quote here the reflection of Paul MorandThe incognito died, killed by press photographers. The man in focus, dispossessed of all secrecy, exhibited in millions of copies that spread his face, which he tries in vain to hide with his hand. Will the man of tomorrow have the right to everything except the shadow?
Alfredo Embid was a medical student at the University of La Laguna at the time of the accident. His conclusions further highlight the danger that lurks everywhere.
Embid has studied the presence of plutonium in depleted uranium factories in the United States, which are the same factories that provide the stabiliser rods for the wings of old jumbo jets and other aircraft. The US Department of Energy itself acknowledges this contamination at Paducah, Portsmouth and Oak Rigde. It reported in October 1999 that "depleted uranium contains plutonium and neptunium", which are extremely toxic and last forever.
At a conference given by the aforementioned Alfredo Embid and by Alfonso del Val in the La Prensa Club of the newspaper The Day, In Tenerife, in 1979, two years after the accident, the risk of the effects of DU was already being denounced after the event. At the time, it was stated: "Neither the volunteers, nor the fire services, nor the airport workers, nor the population were informed of the risks of radioactive contamination by burnt DU dust. Converted into particles of one micron (thousandth of a millimetre) and dispersed in the air in the environment, it contaminated land, water, animals and people and even and potentially those of us who did not go to the accident site....".
Dr. Embid regrets that not a word was uttered on the matter by the authorities, not even in the national and international media.
Questions for an unhappy ending
Following the Amsterdam crash in October 1992, when an Israeli El Al Boeing 747 crashed, the company Nuclear Metals, which supplied the depleted uranium to the manufacturer of that aircraft, acknowledged that the DU counterweights on the wings of these aircraft oxidise rapidly at a temperature of 500 degrees, leading to the release into the environment of potentially inhalable and carcinogenic microscopic particles, generated at temperatures of around 1,200 degrees, typical of this type of accident (such as the Tenerife crash).
There are more questions, after all that has been said. Were we in danger, and are we still in danger? Of course we are. What became of those uranium rods that were not burned, and did the Spanish government take care to warn those involved in the rescue of the risks? Evidently not. Has the health of the supposedly affected people who are still alive been monitored? Absolutely not. Do the manufacturers continue to use DU as a counterweight in the wings of some aircraft models because of their small volume and heavy weight? We have not been able to obtain reliable answers either. Is the obvious danger of the possible presence of DU ingots in hypothetically affected aircraft indicated in the rescue protocols for aircraft crashes? I don't know. What I know, I have told you.
