Airport Worker Spoke Polish
Not called to help as Dziekanski waited for hours
VANCOUVER - Minutes after Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski picked up a Vancouver airport computer and threw it at a glass wall, a Pol-ish-speaking airport worker wandered into the facility's operations centre to pick up some paperwork.
Slovakian immigrant Karol Vrba was in the room on Oct. 14 when the pair of calls came in reporting Mr. Dziekanski's erratic behaviour, but was never asked to help, even though he is conversant in Polish and Russian, the language bystanders told authorities the 40-year-old Pole was speaking.
"I feel really upset because I saw that video of what they did to him and it could have been prevented. Definitely," he said yesterday.
Mr. Vrba spoke to the National Post yesterday because, almost exactly a month after Mr. Dziekanski died, he was fired. He believes it may be because he spoke out about the fact that he could have helped. The airport told him he was "unsuitable for the job," an employment mark he said will make it nearly impossible for him to find work as a firefighter, a profession he had been training for as part of his airport duties.
But Mr. Vrba, who immigrated in 1999 and had worked at the airport since July, was not asked to help, and he said a call did not go out for anyone else who spoke Russian or Polish to help, either. Busy with his work, he did not return to the operations centre until after Mr. Dziekanski had died.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/n...95e18d&k=41975