Witnesses saw plane nose-dive
November 12, 2001 Posted: 12:16 PM EST (1716 GMT)
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NEW YORK (CNN) -- For residents near the beaches of New York's borough of Queens, a quiet Veterans Day holiday brought a fresh taste of catastrophe Monday.
Numerous residents, many with children home for the day, saw American Airlines Flight 587 catch fire and plunge to earth Monday morning. Black smoke billowed over the neighborhood from the crash scene and from at least three other sites, where flaming debris caused other fires.
More than 40 fire trucks and 200-plus firefighters were dispatched to the scene.
The neighborhood is home to numerous New York firefighters, who took heavy losses in the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center.
"The Rockaway community was hit hard between the firefighters and civilians who were lost at the World Trade Center," said Chief Jimmy Trudden of the Broad Channel Volunteer Fire Department. "For this to happen in this neighborhood, it's tragic. I can't put it into words."
Witnesses said they saw an explosion on one side of the plane before the crash, but different accounts placed the explosion on different sides of the aircraft. Ethan Moses said he saw the aircraft burning from its left side, then the aircraft's left engine fell off.
"It tilted to the left slightly and it made a nosedive, straight down," Moses said.
Firefighters said one of the Airbus A300's two engines fell off, crashing into a house and setting it on fire.
Another woman described the neighborhood around the crash site as a scene of "complete and utter terror. Everybody is so distraught and upset and in shock," she said.
When the plane approached, "I thought it was like the Concorde and it was flying too low," she said. "Then it hit. It was like a bomb exploded."
The crash occurred about 5 miles from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, where the jet had just taken off for the Dominican Republic's capital Santo Domingo.
Since the September 11 terrorist attacks, U.S. warplanes have patrolled the airspace around New York. Susan Locke, who lives about five blocks away, said she thought the noise at first was a fighter jet.
"I looked out the window and saw a plane nose-dive, straight down," she said.
Phyllis Paul, who lives near the crash site, said a "big, silvery piece of metal" fell behind her house before the plane went down. Paul, who was eating breakfast when she heard the plane, got her 10-year-old son and got out of the house.
"I was sitting having breakfast and I heard the engines very loud," she said. "They were loud and low, and because of what happened September 11, it gave me a chill."