Airshow disaster revisited: Sknyliv's heroes and victims (09/08/02)

Airshow disaster revisited: Sknyliv's heroes and victims

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

LVIV - Best friends Svitlana Bohach and Halyna Khmil died at the Sknyliv Airshow after they covered their children, Ihor, 6, and Ostap, 4, with their own bodies and were hit by razor-like debris when the Ukrainian air force SU-27 jet hurled down onto the crowd, crashed and rolled, disintegrating into thousands of pieces.

Their two older kids - Ms. Bohach's girl, Irena, and Ms. Khmil's boy, Oleh, both 10 - who had been watching the air show apart from their mothers further from the epicenter of the crash, rushed to their mothers' sides. Responding in a manner that belied their tender years, they quickly and determinedly pulled the dismembered remains of the two women off their younger brothers. Ihor and Ostap came out of the tragedy with nary a scratch.

After the great ball of fire that ensued had lifted and only hazy blue smoke remained, a woman who had been at the air base and had run to the scene discerned little Yurchyk Motyziuk, shocked, bewildered and all of 3 years old, standing amid the flames and human debris, covered in blood and human flesh. She took the just-orphaned child into her arms and carried him home, where she cared for him in the hours that passed before relatives found him.

These acts of heroism, related to The Weekly by the next of kin of those who perished, are undoubtedly but two of many acts of compassion and ultimate sacrifice that have gone largely unheralded in the weeks after the catastrophe at the Sknyliv Aerodrome on July 27, when a Soviet-era SU-27 jet fighter aircraft failed to pull out of a vertical dive and plunged into the crowd, numbering some 8,000, scattered across the tarmac.

Much has been said and written about the circumstances leading to the crash and the government and military officials who should carry responsibility for not properly following procedures that might have prevented the events. Less attention has been paid to those who survived the smoke, the flames and the flying debris, as well as those who selflessly and bravely helped save many who might have otherwise perished - a list that includes doctors, nurses, emergency workers and state militia, as well as spectators.

Some, like Ms. Bohach, and Ms. Khmil, 32 years old and inseparable friends, gave their lives to save their kids when celebration turned to calamity. Others, like the woman who carried little Yurchyk Motyziuk to safety, have shunned the acknowledgments they deserve and have made themselves unavailable to the press and even to people who simply want to thank them for their kindness and bravery. They are part of the untold story of the Sknyliv disaster.

As Lviv residents observed traditional 40th day memorial services on September 5 with divine liturgies in all of the city's churches and a procession from the Lviv city center to the Sknyliv Aerodrome in honor of the airshow victims, 27 people remained hospitalized. In all 76 people, among them 27 children, died as a result of the air disaster, while another 241 people, including 83 children, were hospitalized with injuries. Thirteen children lost at least one parent; three kids lost both, including 4-year-old Yurchyk.

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Yurchyk's parents, Bohdan, 28, and Iryna, 24, went with him to the air show because the tight-knit family always went somewhere together on the weekend and because Mr. Motyziuk wanted to see the 14th Army, whose air force was celebrating its 60th anniversary that day, with which he had served. The celebration was the reason the Sknyliv airshow was organized.

Hours later, Yurchyk's blackened and bloodied face was seen on countless television screens after cameras filmed him sitting helplessly amid the charred metal and human debris on the tarmac. He didn't sit there long because a woman who has yet to be identified picked him up and carried him to her home.

Oksana Motyziuk, Bohdan's sister and Yurchyk's godmother, said she first heard about the catastrophe at around 1 p.m. during a special news bulletin, 15 minutes after the crash had occurred. A short while later a friend phoned and told her that Yurchyk was being shown on a certain television channel. They raced to the hospital near the air base, where volunteers gave them the number of the woman who had taken Yurchyk under her care.

Ms. Motyziuk and her parents met the good samaritan that evening, but she insisted that she would only give up Yurchyk with proper identification and with law enforcement officials acting as intermediaries.

"We had not brought documentation to show that we were grandpa and grandma," explained the elder Motyziuk, "so we called [Yurchyk's other grandmother], who brought identification and took Yurchyk home.

In the confusion and shock, they never even got the woman's name. They have twice tried to visit her since then, to thank her for her heroic deed, but no one answers the door or the telephone. The Weekly also failed to contact her despite repeated attempts.

"The woman had a big heart," explained Yurchyk's grandfather. "People had already called stating that the child was theirs or that they were ready to pay her to give him up, but she acted properly."

The majority of survivors of the Sknyliv airshow disaster are children, teenagers and young adults below the age of 30. The dark memories and grisly details will stay with them a lifetime. They will have to deal with post-traumatic stress syndrome and "survivor guilt" in the weeks and years ahead, according to psychologists.

Yurchyk, a quiet and unassuming child, today cries more often than he once did. The Motyziuks believe their 3-year-old grandson remembers the events well, although he rarely mentions them.

"He seems to understand that something happened but doesn't yet fully understand what it means," explained Yurchyk's aunt and godmother, Oksana. "Recently, while playing at his godfather's house, located near the Lviv Airport, he saw an airplane and stopped to gaze carefully at the sky until it disappeared. He did this while the other kids continued their activities undisturbed.

Another time, as she explained, he saw a newspaper with a photo of the ill-fated aircraft tumbling along the tarmac and commented matter-of-factly, "I was there."

* * *

Ten-year-old Iryna Bohach also is trying to deal with events she doesn't fully understand, having viewed her mother's grisly death, and more savage scenes of human dismemberment, destruction and grief in a few hours that most warriors do in a lifetime

The youngster is reluctant to talk about the events of that tragic day, except to describe what happened when the aircraft exploded as it hit the ground.

"I fell on my knees from the explosion. There was a lot of glass flying around," explained Iryna in a timid voice.

Her grandmother, Maria Sokulska, anguish on her face, head covered by a scarf and dressed in mourning black, said that her granddaughter and grandson do not sleep in their father's place, but spend the night in a separate apartment she shares with her husband, which is located several floors below. This is because Iryna, at least, is more comfortable with more people in the apartment.

Her younger brother, however, no longer cares to stay in the building at all. While a reporter talked with the family, 6-year-old Ihor repeatedly asked to go outside. His father, Volodymyr Bohach, explained that his son would live outdoors if that were a realistic option.

"He doesn't want to come indoors, and when we finally make him do so, within minutes he wants to go back outside again," explained Mr. Bohach.

Iryna, who also suffers night sweats and bad dreams, and her younger brother are both undergoing psychiatric counseling, as is Yurchyk Motyziuk. Doctors say that only time will heal the psychological trauma they have experienced.

Dr. Oleh Bereziuk, assistant head of the department of psychiatry at Lviv State Medical University, who has seen many of the victims, said that most are currently only beginning to get over shock - some with loss of memory regarding the event, while others may already be reacting to the cataclysm of July 27 by withdrawing from society, by not venturing out of their apartments, increasing their use of alcohol or even becoming manic about attending church services. Others repeatedly go over the event in their minds, detail by detail, several times a day, which paralyzes normal social activity.

"It all depends on the degree of sensitivity and how the body deals with it," said Dr. Bereziuk, explaining why individuals react in various ways.

He said that up to 1,500 of the witnesses to the event who survived may feel some sort of psychological fallout within the next six months, with some suffering more serious and longer-term post-traumatic stress syndrome, which would require more intensive counseling.

To help the families of the victims, the state promised to cover funeral expenses and followed up with 2,000 hrv to each family, which both the Bohaches and the Maotyziuks said they had already received. In addition, surviving children have been offered the opportunity to rest and recuperate at several sanitariums around the country.

In fact, the Khmils, whose daughter Halyna died with her best friend, Svitlana Bohach, had left for a government-paid vacation at a Carpathian Mountain sanitarium a day before they were to be interviewed by The Weekly. The Bohaches were awaiting a trip to the Crimea in the near future.

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There is a tragic irony to the story behind the close friendship between Halyna Khmil and Svitlana Bohach, the two mothers and best friends who died at Sknyliv. It is an irony that can never be explained properly, but makes one consider spiritual matters more deeply. When Halyna and Svitlana first met seven years ago, what spawned the strong bond that made them nearly inseparable in the ensuing years as they raised their individual families was the striking coincidence of so many special dates in their personal histories. Soon after they met, they discovered that they were born on the same date, that they were married on the same date and that they had both given birth to their first child in the same maternity ward several days apart. What they could not have known was that their decision to attend the Sknyliv air show together would lead the two closest friends to share one final date together.

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