They lost a son, a daughter, a brother, a husband. Five years after the dramatic accident of a Boeing 737 MAX in Ethiopia, the families of the victims continue to support each other in their mourning and their fight against the American aircraft manufacturer.
“We have French, Canadians, Americans, Irish, British,… we are all here and we are fighting together,” explains Naoise Ryan.
This Irish woman lost her husband Mick when the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing crashed on March 10, 2019, leaving 157 dead and as many bereaved families.
Around ten of them met on Wednesday in front of the American Department of Justice in Washington, for yet another procedure aimed at relaunching criminal proceedings in the United States, suspended by an agreement concluded by Boeing.
With also hundreds of relatives of the victims online, according to Catherine Berthet, a 56-year-old French woman who made the trip from Paris, even though taking the plane had become “a nightmare” for her.
“Coming here every time is traumatic,” confides Naoise Ryan. But it is particularly “important” at a time when Boeing is in turmoil due to a series of failures, including the recent fall of a door from an Alaska Airlines aircraft in mid-air.
This incident “was horrible for us, it reactivated a lot of things”, adds Ms. Berthet.
She brought with her photos of her daughter Camille, posing all smiles alongside her little brother. Photos found miraculously intact among the debris of the plane, alongside a black dress that she had given him for his 28th birthday, shortly before the tragedy.
“Blessing”
This day, Catherine hardly mentions it with her fellow prisoners. “We are very close but we never talk about what happened,” she confides with trembling hands.
Her memories are rare: the mention “no survivors” on a press article, and the SMS from her daughter’s partner involuntarily telling her the news: “Catherine, I know this must be the worst day of your life, but I need you to call me.”
Then, the void: “I had a complete hole in the first months after the crash”.
It was on the radio that Nadia Milleron, a farmer from Massachusetts, learned that a plane had crashed just after takeoff. She immediately thinks of her 24-year-old daughter Samya Rose, rushes to the airport and flies to Ethiopia.
“We were the first foreign family there,” she remembers, her eyes brimming with tears.
In the months that followed, she had a car accident and left food burning every time she cooked.
“What I can tell you is that it was hell,” soberly summarizes Naoise Ryan, whose children were three and a half and six months old at the time of their father’s sudden death.
A year after the tragedy, families find themselves on the scene in Ethiopia. Some have already made contact, others will join them over the months and years.
Bonds of friendship are formed, a group is born. “It’s a blessing to have them,” says Catherine Berthet.
Memory
“These people are serious, they want to get to the bottom of things,” smiles shyly Ike Riffel, who lost his two children aged 26 and 29 in the accident.
“This will never bring our sons back to us. But our fight is to obtain justice for them and for the 346 people who were on these planes,” continues this American retiree, also counting the deaths of another Boeing 737 MAX, five months ago in Indonesia.
“I’m not blaming Boeing, I think it’s a great company, but I’m blaming those responsible because there were these deaths and they’re still there,” he continues. “As long as they are in office, I don’t see things changing.”
He hopes to find in a possible future trial a form of appeasement and a way of honoring the memory of the disappeared.
“If this can help prevent other deaths, my daughter will not have died for nothing,” hopes Nadia Milleron, who is running for a seat in the American Congress.
“There is not a day when I do not think of her, of her enthusiasm, of her joy,” confides the mother, who five years ago planted a cherry tree where her daughter loved to play when she was little. .
“Today, it’s in bloom,” she whispers, her voice cracking with emotion.
