Iceberg, Right Ahead 214
noon. Every tree on the hillside was clear as a
knife edge, and the sky reflected a weird glow,
a color I can not describe. Many things hap-
pened at once. I heard the biggest explosion
of my life, I turned and started to run. I saw
a friend’s face contorted in Oh shit. I heard
a smaller and then a larger boom, I left the
ground, I was on the ground, scrambling, won-
dering why I was down there. I heard glass
breaking and shit was flying everywhere.”^18322 seconds after the launch, the rocket hit the ground
just across the road from the hotel. The Chinese gov-
ernment claimed the villagers were evacuated before the
launch, but the foreign personnel’s bus back to the hotel
was mysteriously delayed by five hours. Everyone sus-
pected that the Chinese wanted to clean up before they
could return to the hotel. When they finally came back,
they saw hundreds of Chinese soldiers working in the
area. Eyewitnesses have later claimed how they saw trucks
that transported human remains.^183 “In my department, a
classmate of mine died,” a villager said. “Two were seriously
injured and nearly died. There were three or four cuts on
his face. His neck artery was broken. The soldier pressed
on the cut all the way to Xichang City where it was finally
stitched.”^405
The official casualties were six dead and 57 injured.
That’s a realistic number for the casualties among the
technical personnel who worked with the launch. It’s im-
possible to say how many local villagers died. The numbers