Investigators and rescue workers yesterday began the grim reckoning in the wake of the crash of Korean Air flight 801 on Guam island, trying to ascertain the cause of the disaster and excavating the first corpses from the wreckage. Shortly after dark in the West Pacific, the joint civilian-military rescue operation announced that there were "no more survivors".
By nightfall, 31 of the 254 passengers aboard were counted and still alive, although two were critically injured. Four others had survived the crash but died of their injuries yesterday, and 70 bodies had so far been removed and taken to a makeshift morgue.
"We were getting there, and people were just screaming," said police officer Mr Carlos Roman. "We wanted to help everybody, but we couldn't."
The televised scenes at the crash site yesterday were extraordinary and disturbing, with grieving relatives allowed to roam the wreckage and mingle with rescue workers, investigators and camera crews while the bodies of family members were cut free from the dismembered hulk of the plane. Meanwhile, survivors told stories which both described a remarkable human drama and illuminated the way for investigators.
Mr Hong Hyon Song, from Seoul, described his success in wrenching a woman from the flaming wreckage, but added that fire had stopped him from freeing small children trapped in the inferno.
He recalled his desperate attempts to save them: "I shouted into the wreckage asking whether anybody was alive, and children shouted for help.
"I asked how many and they said `four'. I could not get back in because the fire was causing explosions inside the plane."
Mr Hong said that as the aircraft split apart, a crack opened up above his seat, through which he escaped.
Among the first rescuers was the governor of the island, Mr Carl Gutierrez, who described getting an 11-year-old Japanese girl from the burning wreckage and dissuading her from going back into the blaze for her mother.
The girl's father was traced in Tokyo yesterday: Mr Tatsno Matsuda said: "I am so grateful to the governor, and it seems my little girl is all right. But I still have no word of my wife."
Mr Gutierrez also described the dramatic and miraculous rescue of the two last recovered survivors - a mother and daughter who had been trapped in the shattered cockpit for five hours. "They simply would not let go of each other," he said. "They were embedded into the steel and the cushions."
He continued: "We had to follow the sounds; it was eerie as we got closer, I heard all the screams coming from dark spots."
Most of the passengers were Koreans, of whom many were newlyweds going to Guam for their honeymoons, as is a Japanese tradition. One bride, Ms Cho Kyui Yong (29), sat at the top of the valley sobbing, with her face buried in her lap, repeating the words "my husband" like a mantra. Fourteen passengers were US citizens.
Meanwhile, the search for signs of a mechanical or engine failure on board the plane was only in its earliest stages yesterday, with both "black boxes", (actually coloured fluorescent orange) now recovered from the wreck and flown to Washington DC for analysis. There were also questions about the recent replacement of the entire Federal Aviation Authority employed control tower team at Guam by staff on a private contract.
As tearful and distraught relatives of the dead massed at KAL's Seoul headquarters to hear news of their relatives, they chanted angrily "Korean Air repent!".
Airline experts in the US rallied to the defence, however, of the Boeing 747 plane, despite the fact that the KAL 801 crash follows only days after the withdrawal of the FBI from the investigation into that of TWA 800 off New York last year, with no survivors - thereby weighing the case heavily towards mechanical failure.