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Lara Beer waited at the train station, looking forward to seeing her best friend, returning from a week-long school exchange trip to Spain.
The 14-year-old said the train came in as planned on Tuesday afternoon, but her friend Paula wasn't on it.
"I just went back home," Beer said yesterday, wiping tears from beneath her red-framed glasses. "Then my parents told me Paula was dead."
Beer's friend was one of 16 students and two teachers from the main high school in the western German town of Haltern who were killed aboard the Germanwings flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf that crashed on Tuesday in France.
Sixty-seven Germans, many Spaniards, and people from Australia, Japan, Israel, Turkey, Denmark, Britain and the Netherlands were believed to be among the 150 who died.
The crash has hit Haltern hard. "This is certainly the darkest day in the history of our city," said a tearful Bodo Klimpel, the town's mayor. "It is the worst thing you can imagine."
In the rural town amid fields about 80km northeast of Dusseldorf, it seemed everyone knew someone who died aboard the aircraft.
"We are a town of 38,000," Klimpel said, adding his son attended the same school as the students who died. "It's only natural that you know some people personally."
Classes were cancelled yesterday but students were encouraged to come to the Joseph Koenig High School to be with classmates and talk with psychologists and other counsellors.
Police had erected a line outside the building to keep dozens of reporters and cameras away from the children as they hugged and wept at a makeshift memorial of candles and flowers at the entrance to the building.
A hand-painted sign leaningon an outdoor table tennis table read in white letters: "Yesterday we were many; today we are alone", with 16 white crosses painted underneath.
Beer was one of a group that came from a neighbouring school to be with the Joseph Koenig students to try to come to grips with what had happened.
"We're all talking with each other; the atmosphere is indescribable," she said. "You just can't believe that your own friend is gone."

Marti Pujol, mayor of Llinars del Valles, a village near Barcelona, said pupils at the Instituto Giola, which the German visitors had attended, were being given counselling to help cope.
Also among the victims were two star opera singers, one of them accompanied by her baby, theatre officials said.
Bass baritone Oleg Bryjak, 54, and contralto Maria Radner, 33, were flying home to Dusseldorf after starring in Richard Wagner's opera Siegfried in Barcelona.
The theatre said Radner was travelling with her husband and baby - one of two infants to perish on the flight, according to officials.
"The Liceu theatre wishes to express its condolences for the passing of the singers Oleg Bryjak and Maria Radner, as well as her husband and baby in the accident suffered by the plane bound from Barcelona," it said.
Kazakh-born Bryjak lived in Dusseldorf and was a member of the city's opera. He had played the part of Alberich in Siegfried in Barcelona.
"We have lost a great artist and a great man ... We are shocked," said Christoph Meyer, general director of the Dusseldorf opera house, announcing Bryjak's death earlier.
Agence France-Presse, Associated Press
 

Germanwings crash ends 6 years without a fatal accident in Europe's airways
The Germanwings plane crash in the French Alps ends the longest period in modern aviation history without a fatal accident involving a large European passenger plane.
The last crash of a European-registered plane carrying 100 or more passengers was almost six years ago when a Paris-bound Air France plane crashed while crossing the Atlantic Ocean after leaving Brazil, according to accident data.
European and US carriers had been in their safest period ever after decades of technology and pilot-training improvements gradually eliminated one cause of accidents after another, said Steve Wallace, the former accident investigation chief at the US Federal Aviation Administration, who described the record as "unbelievable". The trend was the same in the US, according to data from the National Transportation Safety Board. There has not been a passenger death on a US carrier since a turboprop operated by Colgan Air crashed near Buffalo, New York, on February 12, 2009, killing 50 people.
While there had been two crashes on regional airline flights and mishaps involving mechanics and ground crew, there had been only one fatal accident on a large US carrier jet in the past 10 years, according to the data. That accident killed a child after a Southwest Airlines plane skidded off a runway at Chicago's Midway Airport on December 8, 2005.
One outgrowth of the declining accidents was that the only crashes that now occurred in the most developed nations were unusual and difficult to predict, said Michael Barr, who teaches aviation safety at the University of Southern California.
"Almost all accidents now are one of a kind," Barr said. "As the number of hazards out there on airplanes get less and less, you'd expect that."
Before Tuesday, there had been three fatal accidents in Europe on large jets built by Boeing or Airbus in the past 10 years, according to data from the Aviation Safety Network, Boeing and the International Air Transport Association trade group.
Bloomberg


High school mourns 16 students and two teachers among 150 dead after Germanwings crash in French Alps

A student places a candle outside the Josef-Koenig-Gymnasium high school, which is mourning 16 students and two teachers killed in the Germanwings plane crash. Photo: Reuters

Students attend a mass near Barcelona. Photo: AP

German jet's cockpit voice recorder found 'damaged' after French Alps crash that killed 150

Tiny bits of wreckage and debris lie on the mountain slopes after the crash of the Germanwings Airbus A320 over the French Alps on Tuesday. Photo: EPA

A gendarmerie helicopter gets ready to takeoff in a field where rescuers are headquartered in the southeastern French town of Seyne. Photo: AFP

Rescuers have been struggling with difficult terrain and snow to reach the site of the crash. Photo: Xinhua

Search and rescue personnel walk near scattered debris while making their way through the crash site of the Germanwings Airbus A320 yesterday. Photo: AFP

One of the debris found was a section of the jet's fuselage, with the airline's yellow and purple colours. Authorities have retrieved a black box but it was unclear if it was the flight data recorder or cockpit voice recorder. Photo: AFP

Carsten Spohr, CEO of German airline Lufthansa, offered his condolences to the families after returning from the scene of the crash. The airline said it was treating the crash as an accident. Photo: AFP

Family members of passengers in the crashed Germanwings flight comfort each other at Barcelona's El Prat airport, where the plane took off from before the accident. Photo: Xinhua

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve (centre) is sheltered from the rain upon his arrival in Seyne, south-eastern France. Photo: AFP

The mangled black box from the flight. Photo: Reuters

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German high school mourns 16 students and two teachers who died in Germanwings crash as they were coming home from exchange trip


German high school mourns 16 students and two teachers who died in Germanwings crash as they were coming home from exchange trip.
