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San Francisco plane-crash survivors tell of ‘miracle’ escapes amid chaos on Asiana Flight 214

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There was an eerie moment of silence aboard Asiana Flight 214 after it crashed at San Francisco International Airport on Saturday afternoon — then all hell broke loose, passengers said yesterday.

“Everybody was screaming,” Benjamin Levy said of the chaos that erupted around him and his fellow fliers.

“I was trying to usher them out. I said, ‘Stay calm, stop screaming, help each other out, don’t push.’ ”

Wen Zhang described how she grabbed her 4-year-old son, whose leg was broken in the impact, and ran with him through an obstacle course of falling baggage toward a large hole in the side of the jet where the bathroom had been.

“I had no time to be scared,” she said. “It lasted 10 seconds. I wasn’t thinking about anything . . . I just wanted it to stop.

“I left through the hole very close to my seat, big enough for two people to get through,’’ she said. “I was on the right side in Row 40, near the window.”

Cops tossed utility knives up to crew members to cut panicked passengers out of their seat belts as flames and smoke engulfed the wreckage.

Once freed, many slid down the plane’s emergency chutes.

“It’s a miracle we survived,’’ said passenger Vedpal Singh, who escaped with a broken collarbone.

Shi Da, who was sitting with his wife and teenage son near the back of the plane, marveled that his family got out with just cuts and bruises.

“I just feel lucky,’’ he said. “We are so lucky we sit beside the tail and we can leave the plane in the first place.”