Posted on 11/12/2001 9:06:00 AM PST by t-shirt
Jet 'exploded into pieces'
Monday, 12 November, 2001
BBC Residents watched as firefighters battled the blaze
Eyewitnesses have spoken of their horror at seeing an Airbus A300 crash into a residential area of New York. Witnesses reported seeing a fire or explosion on one side of the aircraft as an engine fell off.
The plane then crashed into the Rockaway area of Queens.
I saw the flames and the smoke and I just thought, 'Oh no, not again'
Milena Owens, who lives yards from the crash site, said she was putting up Thanksgiving decorations on her window when she saw the plane fly far too low.
"I heard the explosion and I looked out the window and saw the flames and the smoke and I just thought, 'Oh no, not again'."
"The whole house shook," said Gus Cholakis, who lives 100 yards from the spot where some of the wreckage came to rest.
Resident's prayers
"I looked out the window, the first thing I saw was a huge fireball right outside."
Mr Cholakis, 38, said he had known 13 of those lost when the World Trade Center collapsed.
This neighbourhood has been through enough
Gus Cholakis
He admitted he was praying he had not lost more friends, adding: "This neighbourhood has been through enough."
John Maroney, 47, said the engine plummeted onto a Texaco petrol station near his house, and pieces of plane were only a few hundred yards away.
"That's probably what shook us up from our beds. The whole house jumped.
'Climbing position'
"We were all out there with fire extinguishers and hoses, but we couldn't do much."
Ethan Moses said he had seen the plane climbing in the sky after take-off.
It was travelling to the left slightly and then it just nose dived straight down
Ethan Moses , "It was in a climbing position and when I looked up I saw fire on the left side of the engine," he told CNN.
The wing appeared to separate from the rest of the plane, which veered to the left and then plunged into a nose dive, he said.
"It was travelling to the left slightly and then it just nose dived straight down," Mr Moses said, adding that fire spread on the ground, moving from house to house within seconds.
Phyllis Paul said she heard the plane's engine drone louder as it descended.
Falling metal
"It was very, very loud. Because of what happened on 11 September, it gave me a chill," she told CNN.
"It was getting louder and louder and I looked out the window. I saw a piece of metal falling from the sky."
The wings were going backwards and forwards like it was trying to balance itself
Phyllis Paul
Beverly Browne, from Brooklyn, said she saw white smoke coming from the plane before it crashed.
"The wings were going backwards and forwards like it was trying to balance itself. There was white smoke coming out of it.
"It just couldn't seem to stabilise itself. The next thing I knew it had crashed."
? David Solero was driving over a bridge by Rockaway when he saw fire on the left hand side of the plane.
He told CNN: "We looked up and saw the fire coming from the left hand side - it could have been an explosion."
Plane 'veered'
Other witnesses told reporters that the fire or explosion was on the right hand side of the plane.
Mr Solero added: "It could have been the engine was on fire.
I was scared it was going to veer towards us and hit us - we stopped dead in our tracks
David Solero, "It flew right over us, started to veer to the left then it veered back right.
"I was scared it was going to veer towards us and hit us - we stopped dead in our tracks.
"We saw something fly off the plane."
One woman fled her home, fearing she could be killed.
Concorde-like sound
She told CNN: "It was a huge, loud sound. It seemed so loud that I was like ducking almost.
"I just heard - it sounded like Concorde flying too low and then it just hit.
Eyewitness
-- "It blew up into a huge fireball and I jumped out the second floor of my house." "It hit the house behind me and I think it exploded into pieces."
"I went over the deck in the front of my house because the back was so hot."
"We were just in shock and we had to evacuate two streets away. It was so horrible." "There is a lot of terror here. Everybody is in shock."
"I was very, very lucky."
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They don't. Eyewitness testimony is often used to corroborate physical evidence, but no prosecutor or defense attorney will base a case only upon it. Numerous experiments have been conducted on the reliability of eyewitnesses, and in every case different witnesses remembered seeing different things. The show, "Law and Order," played this up in an episode a few years ago when a group of witnesses to a murder could not agree on what the murderer looked like.
Anyone who has followed the "Repressed Memory" phenomenon over the past few years knows how easy it is to manufacture memories, which is another aspect of the non-corroborating eyewitness phenomenon. In other words, the human memory is a highly maleable thingy.
We have rules around here about language and such, we ought to have a rule for stupidity.
It proves no such thing, as yet. Wait until more information is gathered.
But the government and many on FR want to find the most unlikely cause(I guess it give them a false since of security to delude themselves into below that terror didn't occur), while completely ignoring the most obvious cause which was observed by the actual eyewitnesses.
We should call them the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, all is by accident, deluded crowd.
I tend to give more credibility to EARLY eye witness reports, those that are given (1)before any news of the event has been reported and (2)have not been skewed by other eyewitness reports. It's also valuable to know the vantage point of the eyewitness.
That's pretty funny!
LMAO!
Oh please. Stop this. Are you there? Do you see the reporter turning away people who claim they heard an explosion?
It seems there are people who WANT this to be an explosion, and still others who want this explosion to be caused by a bomb. And if the evidence does not support that, then anyone who postulates something to the contrary is a shill or government hugger.
Please have a more open mind than what your posts indicate.
Maybe by your way of thinking we shouldn't allow eyewitness testimony and rely on whatever the government, judge, police, etc says. Hell let's just get rid of the jury too!---they are just mere unreliable citizens too, huh?
Only government is all-knowing, all-wise and infallible! Let us give up all our rights to eyewitness evidence from fellow citizens and let us bow down all-mighty government have our masters decide our fate in all criminal matters!
We must not trust our lying eyes, they decieve us, ever-honest, all-mighty, all-knowing government does not!
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Thank God our founding father didn't think as you!
I've noticed this today as well...
i.e. OWK and crowkiller for example....
I have seen this happen.
--Fury
No, it is merely what most of the eyewitnesses(not just some random people on the internet) have said they saw--an explosion--and they were citizens in the neighborhood---they had absolutely no reason to lie or to want to believe it was an explosion.
It is you, Fury, who wants to believe it was an accident against the evidence.
It is you who refusing to open your mind and look at the evidence.
Why? Is it too scary for you to consider that this was very likely an act of terrorism?
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