Ny: 49 killed as plane crashes into home in clarence center

[atprm]

49 KILLED AS PLANE CRASHES INTO HOME IN CLARENCE CENTER

http://media.buffalonews.com/smedia/2009/02/12/23/2-winterbackweather_fire.embedded.prod_affiliate.50. jpg


By Dale Anderson and Phil Fairbanks
News Staff Reporters

Forty-nine people died when a Continental Express airplane crashed into a house in Clarence Center shortly after 10 p.m. Thursday, setting off a huge fire that could be seen miles away.

The dead included 44 passengers, four crew members and a person on the ground.

A nurse at Erie County Medical Center said the hospital's second shift had been told to stay late to treat survivors but was sent home before midnight.

"There were no souls to bring in and treat," she said.

Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority spokesman C. Douglas Hartmayer said there was little communication between the plane, Flight 3407, and the tower before the crash. Crew members aboard the flight from Newark Airport had reported mechanical problems as they approached Buffalo.

The plane reportedly was a Bombardier Q400, a twin-engine turboprop with a passenger capacity of about 74.

"I was told by the tower the plane simply dropped off the radar screen," Hartmayer said.

Initial reports said the crash site was 6050 Long St., not far from the Clarence Center Fire Hall on Clarence Center Road. Police said one man was in the residence at the time of the crash.

About 12 other nearby homes were evacuated. Several of them sustained fire damage.

"We had a significant amount of fuel left in the aircraft, said Dave Bissonette, emergency co ordinator for the Town of Clarence. "It was a hazmat situation."

Chris Kausner of Clarence, whose sister Ellyce was aboard the flight, told The Buffalo News that after he heard about the crash, he called another sister who had gone to pick her up at the airport to see if her plane had landed.

"She said that they told them the plane had landed and was taxiing, but that was not the case," he said.

Kausner said Ellyce was a law student at Florida Coastal University in Jacksonville and was coming home to visit.

In Washington, the National Transportation Safety Board announced that it will be sending a team to Buffalo this morning to investigate the crash.

Lorenda Ward will serve as chief investigator. She has investigated several other plane crashes during her tenure at the agency -- including the fall 2007 crash in Manhattan that claimed the life of New York Yankees pitcher Corey Lidle.

Safety Board Commissioner Steven Chealander and public affairs officer Keith Holloway will accompany Ward to Buffalo. While the agency's investigations usually take months to complete, the agency said it would hold a news conference to discuss the accident in the Buffalo area today.

The crash is America's deadliest since a Comair commuter jet crashed in Lexington, Ky., on Aug. 27, 2006. That crash also claimed 49 lives.

David Luce, who lives about 150 yards from the crash scene, on Goodrich Road, said he wasn't surprised to learn that there were so many deaths.

"I can't imagine that anyone survived it," he said. "If you heard that explosion, and you saw how fast the whole area was on fire, it was pretty clear that it was jet fuel burning."

Just before the crash, Luce heard the plane and noticed that it sounded a little funny.

"It sounded quite loud, and then the sound stopped," Luce said. "Then one or two seconds later, there was a thunderous explosion. I thought something hit our house. It shook our whole house."

"There was the initial boom, and then these cannon shots ... these loud secondary explosions, and they went on for about 10 minutes."

Within 5 to 10 seconds, Luce said he saw flames 40 or 50 feet high.

One or two minutes after the crash, Luce had walked to a spot that gave him a clearer view of the scene.

"The house was already flattened. There was no house, just a pile of rubble and still burning."

Luce said he heard screams following the crash, but he doesn't know whether they came from injured people or from neighbors.

Almost two hours after the crash, Luce said he still saw flames shooting from the crash site, but they were not as high as before. Buffalo News Staff Photographer Harry Scull Jr., who lives in Clarence, said he heard a fire alarm at 10:20 p.m.

"Thirty seconds later, the phone rang, and I knew it was something big," he said. "It was my neighbor. He said a plane hit a house, look out your window. I'm two miles from there, and it was a ball of fire."

Scull said he went to Long Street to take photos and found a chaotic scene as firefighters attempted to run hoses to fight the flames.

Scull noted that after dark, he has noticed that incoming flights pass lower overhead.

"It scares you, they come in so low," Scull said. "You can smell the jet fuel burning. I knew it was just a matter of time."

News Staff Reporters T.J. Pignataro, Harold McNeil, Sharon Linstedt, and Staff Photographers Harry Scull Jr. and Bill Wippert contributed to this report.

[atprm]

VIDEO of crash site tonight. (http://wcbstv.com/breakingnewsalerts/continental.airlines.crash.2.934393.html)

May God Rest Their Souls!! :(

[gmyers]

Those poor people. Can you imagine a plane crashing into your house. Thats scary. I feel for the families of the people that died.

[galeane29]

Just reported on Fox, death toll is now 50

[Jenefer3]

How horrific!
I have a friend who lives in Buffalo, I hope he's okay, he won't answer his dang phone.

[cabby92]

I'm going to Buffalo tomorrow for a fun girls' day. Kind of puts a damper on the day.

[krisharry]

Very sad, not too far from where we used to live.

[gmyers]

Talk about bad timing they said one man hitched a ride on the plane after his shift. He died too. He wasn't supposed to be on the plane.

[janelle]

9/11 widow among victims of crash near Buffalo
Beverly Eckert was flying to her hometown to mark late husband's birthday
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29176877/

J. Scott Applewhite / AP file
Beverly Eckert, left, shown here with fellow 9/11 family activist Mary Fetchet on Capitol Hill in 2004, was among those killed in the crash of Flight 3407.
View related photos Video


Double tragedy
Feb. 13: Among the reported dead is the widow of a 9/11 victim who was traveling to be at a scholarship ceremony to honor her late husband.
MSNBC



Slideshow

Crash aftermath
See images from the crash of Continental Flight 3407.
more photos


Video: Life More video
Obama: Eckert was an ‘inspiration’
Feb. 13: President Obama delivers his condolences to the families of Flight 3407 victims including remarks honoring Beverly Eckert whose husband was killed on 9/11.


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NBC, msnbc.com and news services
updated 40 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - One of the victims of Continental Flight 3407, Beverly Eckert, was a Sept. 11 widow who put her never-ending grief to good use to make the country safer.

"We know she was on that plane and now she's with him," Eckert’s sister, Sue Borque, told The Buffalo News.

Just last week, Eckert was at the White House with Barack Obama, part of a meeting the president had with relatives of those killed in the 2001 attacks and the bombing of the USS Cole to discuss how the new administration would handle terror suspects.

Obama, addressing business leaders on Friday, referred to her "passionate commitment" to the 9/11 families. "She 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," the president said during remarks about the crash at the East Room event.

"She was such an important part of all of our work," said Mary Fetchet, another 9/11 family activist. She learned Eckert was aboard the plane from another close Eckert family friend now headed to Buffalo, near where the plane went down, crashing into a house.

Visible grief in wake of 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 World Trade Center's south tower.

She cried when she would tell 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.


Click for related content
Dozens killed in plane crash near Buffalo


Lobbying lawmakers
Eckert was 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.

"My husband's life was priceless, and I will not let his death be meaningless," she wrote in an op-ed in USA Today in 2003.

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

The members 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."

Not an easy role
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."
Eckert was flying to her hometown Thursday night when the plane crashed on approach to the Buffalo airport, killing everyone on board and one person on the ground.

She had planned on celebrating her late husband's 58th birthday and delivering an address to Canisus High School, where Sean Rooney's memory was to be honored with a scholarship.

[atprm]

While the whole situation is very tragic and sad, the fact that a 9/11 widow died in a plane is doubly tragic, ironic and spooky.

My heart hurts. :(

[gmyers]

I can't even imagine what went through those peoples minds when they were crashing. It scares me to think about it.

[sandooch]

How very tragic! May God bless each and every one of them.

[Jolie Rouge]

Coincidence ?

Flight crash-lands in London; 1 taken to hospital

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090213/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_crash_landing;_ylt=AnPAj3bGEySaM4_O8DCJ gYYEtbAF

[atprm]

No mayday call came from pilot before deadly N.Y. crash
John Wawrow / Associated Press

CLARENCE, N.Y. -- A commuter plane dropped out of the sky without warning and nose-dived into a suburban Buffalo house in a fiery crash that killed all 49 people aboard and one person in the home. It was the nation's first deadly crash of a commercial airliner in 2 1/2 years.

The cause of the disaster was under investigation, but other pilots were overheard around the same time reporting a buildup of ice on their wings -- a hazard that has caused major crashes in the past.

The twin turboprop aircraft -- Continental Connection Flight 3407 from Newark, N.J. -- was coming in for a landing when it went down in light snow and fog around 10:20 p.m. Thursday about five miles short of the Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

Witnesses heard the plane sputtering before it plunged squarely through the roof of the house, its tail section visible through flames shooting at least 50 feet high.

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

Two others in the house escaped with minor injuries. The plane was carrying a four-member crew and an off-duty pilot. Among the 44 passengers killed was a woman whose husband died in the World Trade Center attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Federal investigators found the black box recorders in the plane's tail that could shed light on what went wrong, but they said the smoldering debris was still too hot to remove bodies. The recorders were on their way to Washington for examination.

No mayday call came from the pilot before the crash, according to a recording of air traffic control's radio messages captured by the Web site LiveATC.net. Neither the controller nor the pilot showed concern 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.

Erie County Emergency Coordinator David Bissonette said it appeared the plane "dove directly on top of the house."

"It was a direct hit," Bissonette said. "It's remarkable that it only took one house. As devastating as that is, it could have wiped out the entire neighborhood."

The 74-seat Q400 Bombardier aircraft, also known as the Dash 8, in Thursday's disaster was operated by Colgan Air, based in Manassas, Va. Colgan's parent company, Pinnacle Airlines of Memphis, Tenn., said the plane was new and had a clean safety record.

The nearly vertical drop of the plane suggests a sudden loss of control, said William Voss, a former official of the Federal Aviation Administration and current president of the Flight Safety Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group.

Voss suggested that icing or a mechanical failure, such as wing flaps deploying asymmetrically or the two engines putting out different thrust, might have caused the crash, he said.

After the crash, at least two pilots were heard on air traffic control messages saying they had been picking up ice on their wings. "We've been getting ice since 20 miles south of the airport," one said.

Ice on the wings of a plane can alter aerodynamics and interfere with lift and handling. The danger is well known among pilots.

In general, smaller planes like the Dash 8, which uses a system of pneumatic de-icing boots, are more susceptible to icing problems than larger commuter planes that use a system to warm the wings. The boots, a rubber membrane stretched over the surface, are filled with compressed air to crack any ice that builds up.

A similar turboprop jet crash 15 years ago in Indiana was caused by icing, and after that the NTSB issued icing recommendations to more aggressively use the plane's system of pneumatic de-icing boots. But the FAA hasn't adopted it. It remains part of the NTSB's most-wanted safety improvements list.

The National Transportation Safety Board sent a team of investigators to Buffalo. The Department of Homeland Security said there was no indication of terrorism.

While residents of the neighborhood were used to planes rumbling overhead, witnesses said it sounded louder than usual, sputtered and made odd noises.

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."

Dworak drove to the site, 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 22-year-old daughter, Jill, escaped with minor injuries.

Karen Wielinski told WBEN-AM in Buffalo that she was watching TV in the family room in the back of the house when she heard a noise.

"Planes do go over our house, but this one just sounded really different, louder, and I thought to myself, 'If that's a plane, it's going to hit something,'" she told the station. "The next thing I knew the ceiling was on me."

She said her husband, Doug, was killed.

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

The 9/11 widow on board was identified as Beverly Eckert. She was heading to Buffalo for a celebration of what would have been her husband's 58th birthday, said Mary Fetchet, a 9/11 family activist.

Clarence is a growing eastern suburb of Buffalo, largely residential but with rural stretches. The crash site is on a street of older, single-family homes about 20 to 25 feet apart that back up to a wooded area.

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 mistakenly took off from a Lexington, Ky., runway that was too short.

The crash came less than a month after a US Airways pilot guided his crippled plane to a landing in the Hudson River in New York City, 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.

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, Linda Franklin in Dallas, Daniel Yee in Atlanta, Ron Powers in Washington, and Cristian Salazar and Jennifer Peltz in New York.

[Jolie Rouge]

NTSB: Plane crew saw significant ice before crash
19 mins ago

CLARENCE, N.Y. – A federal official says the crew of a commuter plane that crashed near Buffalo discussed "significant ice buildup" on the wings and windshield before the crash. National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Steve Chealander also says the twin turboprop aircraft went through a "severe pitch and roll" after positioning its flaps for a landing.

Continental Connection Flight 3407 from Newark, N.J., was coming in for a landing when it went down in light snow and fog late Thursday. It was a few miles short of Buffalo-Niagara International Airport.

It crashed into a house. Forty-nine people aboard the plane and one person on the ground died.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090213/ap_on_re_us/plane_into_home

[Jolie Rouge]

Sisters of 9/11 activist widow walk similar path
Carolyn Thompson, Associated Press Writer
18 mins ago


EAST AURORA, N.Y. – None of the Eckert sisters ever envisioned walking the halls of Congress, advocating to right wrongs to protect the country from tragedy.

Not Beverly Eckert, a Stamford, Conn., insurance executive before she lost her husband of 21 years on Sept. 11, 2001.

Not Karen Eckert or Susan Bourque, her sisters back home in Buffalo, before Beverly's death in a plane crash earlier this year.

Yet it's the path all would take, that of reluctant but determined advocate: First Beverly as one of the most visible faces pushing to fix problems exposed by the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. Now her sisters, taking on aviation safety following the Feb. 12 crash of Beverly's plane, Continental Connection Flight 3407, near Buffalo. She and 49 others died.

"I didn't want anybody thinking, oh, there's this professional advocacy family stepping forward again, they're rabble-rousers," Karen Eckert said, describing her initial reluctance.

"Or have people think we're using (Beverly)," Bourque added.

Yet after Beverly's death they found themselves, like she had, in a position to be effective advocates, unburdened at home by the demands of young children and with enough knowledge and passion to drive them through their grief toward action.

"Can you imagine if it was one of us who died in the crash, what Beverly would have done?" Karen Eckert asked.

Inside Bourque's East Aurora home — the yard where Beverly and Sean Rooney were married visible through the back window — the sisters are quick to point out that they, like Beverly, are not alone in their advocacy. Other Flight 3407 families, they said, are also regulars in Washington on their own dime and own time.

There is, however, no denying that the Eckert sisters' story is a unique one, intertwining the tragedies of 9/11 and Flight 3407 and the lessons to be learned from each.

"The reason (Beverly) was even on that plane was 9/11," Bourque said, noting she was on her way to her hometown to celebrate what would have been her husband's 58th birthday with their families. Beverly also planned to award an annual scholarship in his name at Rooney's alma mater, Canisius High School.

On this year's anniversary of the attacks, the Voices of September 11th group Eckert co-founded with fellow Connecticut widow Mary Fetchet will present its annual "Building Bridges Award" posthumously to Eckert. Her sisters will accept it on her behalf.

Just a week before she died, Beverly Eckert was at the White House with Barack Obama as the president met with relatives of those killed in the 2001 attacks and the bombing of the USS Cole to discuss how the administration would handle terror suspects.

Although she enjoyed a more private life after seeing the 9/11 Commission complete its work, she was easing back into an advocacy role, her sisters said, joining other 9/11 family members in a new public-awareness campaign focused on preparing against weapons of mass destruction.

Her sisters insist the plane crash did not silence Beverly's voice or spirit.

"If anything, she would want us to have her voice ... I want her voice to resonate," Karen Eckert said.

It already has in the way it has opened doors of senators and representatives to 3407 families. Many knew Beverly, or knew of her.

Her voice resonates in the minds of her sisters, too: whenever they present their fact- and solution-driven case for better pilot training and hiring practices, fatigue management and closer government oversight of the airline industry.

"We have an agenda. The one thing we knew is we can't just go there and say `please help us because we lost our loved ones,'" Karen Eckert said.

"We knew we had to be organized," Bourque said, recalling Beverly's ability to boil down issues to talking points which she could take to lawmakers.

"Who's telling the truth and who's dodging?" they wonder, as Beverly had, during hearings like one held on the crash in May by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Their experience as government workers — Karen retired in May from the Department of Homeland Security and Bourque managed a Social Security office — has given the sisters a window into how government works and a belief that it is not the enemy.

Yet they know from Beverly's experience that an issue can lose momentum as quickly as it gains it — so they press hard for passage of a bill to reauthorize Federal Aviation Administration operations because it includes many safety recommendations they favor. Next week, they'll discuss the measure in Washington with a representative of the Senate Finance Committee before driving to New York City for the 9/11 events.

While not certain they will achieve all of their goals, the sisters have learned from Beverly Eckert that ordinary citizens can effect meaningful change.

"It can be done," Susan Bourque said, a copy of the thick 9/11 Commission report, supported by her deceased sister, on the coffee table. The 9/11 family group is credited with getting sweeping reforms of the U.S. intelligence apparatus passed in 2004.

"We can get in there and it's amazing that it's really a government by the people, for the people," Karen Eckert said.

They recalled a "Making a Difference" segment about Beverly that was narrated by NBC newsman Tom Brokaw on the "Nightly News" after the crash.

"That's our motto," Bourque said. "You've got to make a difference. You don't even have a choice."

___

On the Net:

Voices of September 11th: http://www.voicesofsept11.org

Families of Continental Flight 3407: http://www.3407memorial.com



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090904/ap_on_re_us/us_sept11_widow