Passengers recount terrifying escape from crashed airliner

SAN FRANCISCO -- The two teenage girls traveling from China who died in Saturday’s Asiania Flight 214 crash were on their way to attend a summer church camp.

Now we’re hearing from passengers who were on-board as they describe the terrifying scene after the airplane broke apart.

“It was like, you know, bang and the impact was so powerful,” said passenger Eugene Rah.

One by one, harrowing accounts by passengers who survived the Asiana airliner that crashed on landing in San Francisco on Saturday.

"The plane tail touched the ground directly,” said survivor Wen Zhang. “Everybody screamed.”

“I just knew we were going to have a crash and i thought i was going to die,” added Rah.

Images snapped by the National Transportation Safety Board showed the cabin torn apart leaving oxygen masks hanging from the ceiling.

Two teenage girls from China were found dead on the tarmac. One may have been thrown from the plane on impact while an autopsy will determine if the other girl was run-over by a responding emergency vehicle.

But 305 people onboard flight Asiana flight 214 survived the crash.

182 people were rushed to San Francisco hospitals while the other passengers simply walked away with terrifying memories.

“I looked out through the window and I knew something was wrong,” said Rah. “It's because we were too low. You know I've been, I've been to the situation so many times so I know where I’m supposed to be at. We were approaching to runway, at one point I kinda felt this is not right. It's because I see water right outside the window.”

Surgeons praised the quick action of responders on the scene for saving the lives of dozens of passengers.

“I have to say whoever triaged these patients at the airport did a fabulous job,” said Doctor Margaret Knudson at San Francisco General Hospital. “They got to us the sickest patients in the shortest period of time or i don't think those patients would have survived, truly.”

Passengers said they also helped to free a flight attendant who was trapped by an evacuation slide that inflated inside the aircraft.

Doctors are treating passengers for injuries ranging from severe road rash to paralysis.