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OU Students React To Missing Malaysian Plane
< < Back toFour days into the missing Malaysian Airline flight MH 370 and officials still don't know what exactly transpired early Saturday morning. The search area has expanded to 27,000 miles on the east and west of Peninsular Malaysia.
Chinese officials state they've spotted floating objects that may be debris of the plane south of Vietnam. According to the Washington Post, images of the possible debris was obtained Sunday but was not released until Wednesday.
MH 370 departed from Kuala Lumpur International Airport headed to Beijing when it disappeared off radars 45 minutes later. The 239 passengers on board the Boeing 777 were of 13 different nationalities, most of which were from China.
For one Ohio University student, this incident hits close to home as she had a family friend on the flight.
"He was very excellent in studies, he was very talented," Yi Yang, an Ohio University graduate said about her family friend who had just gotten married in January. "I was very shocked cause I take that same flight to Kuala Lumpur and Beijing and there is no problem."
Malaysia has since accepted assistance from 10 countries, including the United States. However their crisis management has come under fire.
"Well its pretty obvious that the Malaysian government didn't have a plan to deal with a crisis like this or if they did, it wasn't adequate," said Dr. Drew McDaniel, interim director of the Ohio University Media Arts & Studies Department.
Two Ohio University students and documentarians have seen first hand the government's response to a crisis when filming civil unrest in Malaysia.
"The armed forces in Malaysia is usually controlled by the King whereas the police and the internal security is controlled by the government," Azliana Aziz, one half of the Malaysian documentarian duo and an OU graduate student said. "I understand there is a disparity of information given by the two and co-operation isn't the best."
According to Vilashini Somiah, documentarian and graduate student at Ohio University, slow reactions are common practice in Malaysia as she witnessed whilst filming squirmish in Lahad Datu, Malaysia.
"There is some form of delayed reaction by the government," Somiah said. "When we were in Lahad Datu, there was also that delay in reacting."