fuselage skin. Passengers seated on the left side of the aisle and toward the rear felt intense radiant heat from the fire, and were very impatient to escape, many of them standing and moving into the aisles while the aircraft was moving. As the aircraft began its right turn off the runway, around 10 seconds before it stopped, one of the two flight attendants in the rear of the aircraft, probably the No 3 stewardess, opened the right rear door and deployed the emergency chute, but no one escaped through this door because it was blocked by smoke and flames. When the aircraft came to a stop, it was facing the northwest, and a light wind of was blowing from the west, carrying dense smoke, and occasionally flames, in through that door. When the door was first opened, the aircraft had been facing into the wind, and the exit had been clear. When the left front door was opened, this created an airflow from the front of the aircraft to the rear, and out through the right rear door, which likely contained the smoke to the rear of the aircraft. When the right overwing exit and the right front exit were opened, this flow was lost, and the entire cabin rapidly filled with smoke. The left rear exit remained closed. Fire penetrated into the rear portion of the passenger cabin through the floor and along the left wall within one minute of the aircraft stopping. Accident investigators said that this quick penetration of fire into the cabin appeared "to conflict markedly with the air transport industry's expectations" for this type of fire, which at that time expected one to three minutes would be available for evacuation before the fire would be "in a position to directly threaten the occupants". When firefighters determined that no more passengers would leave the aircraft unassisted, they entered the passenger cabin with fire hoses and attempted to extinguish the blaze inside the aircraft, but fighting the fire inside the aircraft had become futile and unsafe. One firefighter was slightly injured when an explosion threw him out the door and down to the tarmac. The cause of the explosion was not determined, but heat-induced overpressure and rupture of an aerosol spray can or therapeutic oxygen cylinder are suspected. Casualties Toxic smoke and fire caused the deaths of 53 passengers and two cabin crew, 48 of them