Lives worth more than luggage

IN A WIDELY SHARED VIDEO clip about the Moscow plane fire that killed 41 people on Sunday, some passengers can be seen trying to grab their luggage even after the fire was already quite fierce. China Daily writer Zhang Zhouxiang stresses the essential principle in such an emergency should be "forget your luggage":

What happened in Moscow is not an isolated incident. Two months ago, a flight from Beijing to Los Angeles had to land at Anadyr Airport in Russia due to a fire alert. Yet when the pilot successfully landed the plane at the airport, many passengers were busy grabbing their luggage despite warnings from the crew that the plane might explode at any time.

Fortunately, the fire alert proved to be a computer error, but it was still an emergency and the passengers should have evacuated the plane as quickly as possible.