Plane crash in NY

[AngelsSix]

Fiery Plane Crash Near Buffalo, N.Y. Kills 49

Friday , February 13, 2009

AP

CLARENCE, N.Y —
A commuter plane "basically dove" into a house while coming in for a landing outside Buffalo, sparking a fiery explosion and killing all 48 people on board and one person on the ground.

It was the first fatal crash of a commercial airliner in the U.S. in 2 1/2 years.

Witnesses heard the twin turboprop aircraft sputtering before it went down in light snow and fog around 10:20 p.m. Thursday. Flames silhouetted the shattered home after Continental Connection Flight 3407 plummeted into it around about five miles from Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

"The whole sky was lit up orange," said Bob Dworak, who lives less than a mile from the crash site. "All the sudden, there was a big bang, and the house shook."


The 74-seat Q400 Bombardier aircraft, operated by Colgan Air, was flying from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and preparing to land at Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, said there was no indication terrorism was involved.

"All indications are that this was an air-safety event," said spokeswoman Amy Kudwa.

The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a team of crash investigators to Buffalo early Friday.

Hours after the crash, the task of retrieving remains had not yet begun. Clarence emergency control director Dave Bissonette called it "still a hot scene."

"It basically dove right into the top of the house from my perspective," Bissonette said. "I'm no expert on re-creation, but it landed on the house, clearly a direct hit."

Prior to the crash, the voice of a female pilot on Continental Flight 3407 could be heard communicating with air traffic controllers, according to a recording of the Buffalo air traffic control's radio messages shortly before the crash captured by the Web site LiveATC.net. Neither the controller nor the pilot showed any concerns that anything was out of the ordinary as the airplane was asked to fly at 2,300 feet.

A minute later, the controller tried to contact the plane but heard no response. After a pause, he tried to contact the plane again.

Eventually he told an unidentified listener to contact authorities on the ground in the Clarence area.

"You need to find if anything is on the ground," the controller said. "All I can tell you is the aircraft is over the marker (landing beacon), and we're not talking to them now."

After the crash, at least two pilots were heard saying they had been picking up ice on their wings.

"We've been getting ice since 20 miles south of the airport," one says.

While residents of the neighborhood where the plane went down were used to planes rumbling overhead, witnesses said this one sounded louder than usual, sputtered and made some odd noises.

Neighbor David Luce said he and his wife were working on their computers when they heard the plane come in low.

"It didn't sound normal," he said. "We heard it for a few seconds, then it stopped, then a couple of seconds later was this tremendous explosion."

The house was totally demolished, with no sign of the plane through the thick, acrid smoke, Luce said.

After hearing the crash, Dworak drove over to take a look, and "all we were seeing was 50 to 100 foot flames and a pile of rubble on the ground. It looked like the house just got destroyed the instant it got hit."

One person in the home was killed, and two others inside, Karen Wielinski, 57, and her daughter, Jill, 22, were able to escape with minor injuries. Twelve homes were evacuated near the crash site.

Erie County Executive Chris Collins said the plane was carrying 5,000 pounds of fuel and apparently exploded on impact.

Firefighters got as close to the plane as they could, he said. "They were shouting out to see if there were any survivors on the plane. Truly a very heroic effort, but there were no survivors."

It was the first fatal crash of a commercial airliner in the United States since Aug. 27, 2006, when 49 people were killed after a Comair jetliner took off from a Lexington, Ky., runway that was too short.

Houston-based Continental Airlines issued a statement saying that preliminary information showed the plane carried 44 passengers and a crew of four.

About 30 relatives and others who arrived at the airport in the overnight hours were escorted into a private area and then taken by bus to a senior citizens center in the neighboring town of Cheektowaga, where counselors and representatives from Continental waited to help.

"At this time, the full resources of Colgan Air's accident response team are being mobilized and will be devoted to cooperating with all authorities responding to the accident and to contacting family members and providing assistance to them," the statement said.

"Continental extends its deepest sympathy to the family members and loved ones of those involved in this accident," said Larry Kellner, chairman and CEO of Continental Airlines, in a later statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with all of the family members and loved ones of those involved in the flight 3407 tragedy."

Manassas, Va.-based Colgan Air said in a statement that airline personnel and local authorities were working to confirm the number of people on board and their identities.

As family members of the victims trickled in to the airport in the overnight hours, they were escorted by airport personnel to a private area.

Chris Kausner, believing his sister was on the plane, rushed to a hastily established command center after calling his vacationing mother in Florida to break the news.

"To tell you the truth, I heard my mother make a noise on the phone that I've never heard before. So not good, not good," he told reporters.

Clarence is a growing eastern suburb of Buffalo, largely residential but with rural stretches. The crash site is a street of older, single-family homes which apparently back up to wooded area.

While the fire was contained, smoke still billowed over the scene about four hours later. Houses in the neighborhood are only about 20 to 25 feet apart.

"The fact that the damage is limited to the one residence is really amazing," said state police spokeswoman Rebecca Gibbons.

The crash came less than a month after a US Airways pilot guided his crippled plane to a landing in the Hudson River off Manhattan, saving the lives of all 155 people aboard. Birds had apparently disabled both its engines.

On Dec. 20, a Continental Airlines plane veered off a runway and slid into a snowy field at the Denver airport, injuring 38 people.

Continental's release said relatives and friends of those on Flight 3407 who wanted to give or receive information about those on board could telephone a special family assistance number, 1-800-621-3263.

[FMF DOC]

Did not want to start a new thread but thought this relevant... For readers

WASHINGTON – One of the victims of the Buffalo commuter plane crash, Beverly Eckert, was a Sept. 11 widow who put her never-ending grief to good use to make the country safer.

President Barack Obama, speaking in the White House's East Room, said Eckert "was an inspiration to me and to so many others, and I pray that her family finds peace and comfort in the hard days ahead."

A week before her death, Eckert met with Obama at the White House as part of a group of 9/11 families and relatives of those killed in the bombing of the USS Cole, discussing how the new administration would handle terror suspects.

Eckert was flying to Buffalo Thursday night to celebrate what would have been her husband Sean Rooney's 58th birthday.

When he died in the World Trade Center, she became one of the most visible, tearful faces in the aftermath of the terror attacks.

Carol Ashley, whose daughter died at the World Trade Center, said the grim details of Eckert's death are particularly painful to Eckert's friends among 9/11 families.

"The fact that it was a plane crash, it was fire, it was reminiscent of 9/11 that way, that's just very difficult," said Ashley, a retired schoolteacher from Long Island.

She carried that grief to Congress as she tried to make the government do a better job protecting its citizens from terrorism.

Her husband worked at Aon Corp., a risk management firm, at the 98th floor of the south tower.

Eckert would cry when she told the story about how her husband — who was her high school sweetheart — called her on the morning of the attacks, and told her he loved her just before there was a loud explosion and nothing more.

She became part of a small group of Sept. 11 widows, mothers, and children who became amateur lobbyists, ultimately forcing lawmakers in 2004 to pass sweeping reforms of the U.S. intelligence apparatus.

They spent months walking the halls of Congress. All of the women were grieving, but Eckert seemed unable or uninterested in holding back her tears.

When it was over and they'd won passage of the intelligence reform law, Eckert vowed to quit her high-profile role "cold turkey." All she wanted, she said, was to go home, buy groceries, and return to something like a regular life.

"I did all of this for Sean's memory, I did it for him," she said, crying again. "There is a euphoria in knowing that we reached the top of the hill. ... I just wanted Sean to come home from work. Maybe now, someone else's Sean will get to come home."

Eckert was flying to her hometown Thursday night when the plane crashed on approach to the Buffalo airport.

After the 2001 attacks, she co-chaired the 9/11 Family Steering Committee, a group of activists devoted to exposing government failures that led up to the 2001 attacks, and fixing them.

She pushed for a 9/11 Commission. She pushed the Bush administration to provide more information to the commission. And when the commission's work was over, she pushed Congress to adopt their recommendations.

For Eckert, the public role was not easy.

One night after a long day at Congress, she found herself in the New York City train station, without a connecting train to her home in Stamford, Connecticut.

"We slept in the train station. We had no place else to go. That's when you look at yourself and say, 'What am I doing? How can we possibly get this done?'."

As Congress hemmed and hawed, Eckert vowed to sleep there, too, if it would get the law passed.

After the law passed, Eckert turned her energies to Habitat for Humanity, helping build homes for low-income families.

"I'm in shock, I just can't believe it," said Carie Lemack, whose mother died Sept. 11 on one of the hijacked planes. "Beverly had a can-do attitude about everything, and she never gave up."