There was a plane crash of a Lao Airlines flight from Vientiane to Pakse on Wednesday, which killed all 44 passengers, as well as the 5 crew members. Right now the news is stating that the crash was due to bad weather, left over from a recent typhoon. There were warning from some embassies not to travel to the south of Laos, because of the weather, but apparently this was something the airline felt they could ignore. The plane crashed into an island near the Pakse airport, along the Mekong River. Bodies are still being pulled from the river. It was a tragedy.
The crash hit international news - I saw it on CNN the next day- but not before expats in Lao had posted it on Facebook. The postings included a photograph of a page that had a list of the passengers on the flight. This means that before the news even knew of crash, we (the expats of Vientiane) knew the names of the dead, and their nationalities.
I read an article a couple months ago about how the U.S. military was having problems controlling information leaks of deaths abroad : specifically, that a wife of a soldier had been informed of his death over Facebook by the wife of a fellow soldier. (Article here: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/04/22/military-spouse-learns-of-husbands-death-by-facebook/)
It's incredibly sad that Facebook has become a primary way of communicating "breaking news" the way it has (and often it's completely inappropriate, as seen in the article above), but for those of us living in Laos, a country with limited infrastructure and few channels of communicating important information, it's become an important tool for us to stay in contact and to stay informed.
Because the Mekong River lies between Thailand and Laos, Thai agencies are helping to recovery the bodies.
The dead include seventeen Lao natives, along with expats from Australia, Canada, France and one from the States, as well as families on vacation. Only 17 of the bodies have been recovered so far, but they expect no survivors.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/18/laos-air-crash-debris-bodies-retrieved
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/17/us-laos-crash-idUSBRE99F0GH20131017
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/18/laos-air-crash-debris-bodies-retrieved
Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their loved ones.
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