Delivers Messages to Kin : Airline Spreads Wings for Quake Survivors

“My God, my father’s alive,” gasped the man on the other end of the telephone. Then again, stronger, “My God, my father’s alive.” Still once more, this time a shout of jubilation: “My God, my father’s alive!”

Then came a choking sob of overwhelming relief, and, for a few seconds, there was silence.

Then, another voice came on the telephone, in Spanish, “It’s true? Muchas gracias! Muchas gracias! May God be with you!”

Rod Emison, 43, assistant manager of passenger services for Western Airlines at Los Angeles International Airport, had just delivered another message telling a family in the United States that loved ones in Mexico City survived the earthquake. The messages are being flown out of Mexico City by the airline in a gratifying and unusual lifeline of communication.

“It’s been like this ever since we began delivering these messages Sunday night,” he said. “These messages are the first news people have heard from their families since the earthquake struck last Thursday. All that anxiety. All that worry. Days of it. Worrying and not knowing anything about how people are down there.

“They shout, they cry, they burst out sobbing. It’s incredible, the outpouring of emotion. I’ve had more ‘Thank yous’ and ‘God bless yous’ since Sunday night than I’ve had in my whole life.”

Emison picked up a pile of papers from the hundreds littering the top of his desk. “Just look at them,” he said. “A few words . . . people’s lives. . . . It’s wrenching.

“You know, I sat here reading the first messages over the phone Sunday night, and after a while, I was crying myself. I couldn’t help it.”

Since last Thursday’s earthquake that devastated central Mexico City and other parts of Mexico, telephone lines between the Mexican capital and the world outside have been dead. Western Airlines, along with other carriers flying into the Mexican capital, conducted its own company communications by messages carried in and out of the damaged city by the crews of its planes.

Then, on Sunday, Jorge Valencia, vice president of Mexico operations, left the capital and went to Guadalajara, where he could telephone his colleagues in Los Angeles. One of the things he told them was that because Mexicans in the capital knew their relatives in the outside world would be anxious to know how they were, he had agreed to accept messages in Mexico City and fly them to Los Angeles.

The first messages arrived in a parcel Sunday night, and volunteer Western Airlines personnel at the airport began calling the telephone numbers written on envelopes and scraps of paper. Far into the night, the telephone lines were busy relaying the magic message “we’re OK” to mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and children all over the United States.

“The first night, there were about 100 messages and about 100 letters people had asked us to mail on for them. We didn’t open the letters, but we phoned them to let them know there was a letter coming,” Emison said. “We couldn’t let them wait for another few days until the letters arrived.”

Word Spread

By Monday morning, Valencia’s staff in Mexico City was better organized. Word spread around the Mexican capital that the airline would carry messages to the outside world. Printed forms were waiting for those who went to the Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City to send their messages.

Nearly 1,000 messages have been received in Los Angeles and passed on to anxious relatives, and more than 400 letters have been forwarded.

“We’ve made calls all over the country,” Emison said. “One call was to Canada, one to Anchorage and one to Fairbanks, in Alaska, at Western’s expense. Yes, it’s a lot of extra work, and we’re working extra hours. But the reward is there every time you hear the reaction.”