'I Saw Things I'd Rather Not Talk About'

John Diaz remembers thinking he needed to find his passport, wallet and carry-on bag. Then he thought: "What do I need my bag for? I'm dead anyway."

But in the midst of fire and smoke and screams, he grabbed it.

"I saw people die. I saw some things I'd rather not talk about," he said Tuesday night from a Taipei hotel after the crash of a Singapore Airlines jumbo jet in Taiwan.

"All this jet fuel was being sprayed around like balls of fire. Everything these balls of fire touched instantly combusted," he said.

And because he had taken his cellular phone on Flight 006, Diaz, 50, was able to call his wife in Santa Monica minutes after the plane crashed during takeoff.

Not all relatives of passengers on the jumbo jet were so lucky.

William Dwan of Canyon Country still didn't know late Tuesday night if his wife, Jenny Dwan, was alive. Dwan said that he had called the airline's 1-800 number for information about his wife several times but that officials told him they would contact him when they knew more.

"I feel very bad. I'm kind of upset," said Dwan, 45. "They should have told us something."

Nor had the family of Michael Peng of Covina learned his fate.

"We're talking to [the airline] now, trying to leave messages," Peng's brother Tim said. "The only information we have obtained is from the Internet." Michael Peng, who works for AT&T in Chino, was returning from a short vacation visiting his parents in Taiwan.

A Taiwanese civil aviation official said 79 people died in the crash, 56 were hospitalized and 44 had minor or no injuries.

Nearly a day after the disaster, there was little official information for anguished loved ones of the 47 American passengers aboard.

But as officials of Singapore Airlines tried to console victims' families around the world, some people, including Diaz's wife in Santa Monica, were getting details from survivors with cell phones.

In a phone conversation moments before takeoff, Diaz told his wife, Nancy Louise Jones, 48, that he was angry with himself for boarding the plane scheduled to depart in strong winds and torrential rain.

Less than an hour later, she was surprised to receive a second call from Diaz. "Honey, I've been in a plane crash. The plane didn't make it but I'm OK."

In an interview in their Santa Monica artist's studio/loft, Jones, who had spoken with her husband eight times in 12 hours, said: "The plane was totally destroyed, and he got out. . . . It's a miracle. . . . Thank God for cell phones."