Posted on 11/16/2001 1:09:50 PM PST by smorgle
'I Know What I Saw...That Was No
Mechanical Problem...No Way!'
By Peter Gelzinis
BostonHerald.com
11-13-1
ROCKAWAY BEACH, NY -"I will never believe it was an accident.
They'll never convince me of that."
Eugene Sanfilippo kept looking past the microphones and
notebooks, down 131st Street toward Jamaica Bay and a vision
that the rest of us could not see.
It was past three in the afternoon, the sky above this sliver of
Queens was clear, but all this lanky, 45-year-old bus mechanic
could see was a huge orange ball of flame; he could still feel the
unbearable heat; he could hear people screaming; he could taste
the acrid black smoke.
And he was still afraid.
"When I heard the explosion, I thought we were under attack,"
Sanfilippo said.
"My first impression was that they'd hit us with a nuclear bomb. I
figured it was just like the World Trade Center. And I watched that
burn from the (Jamaica) bay."
Miles away from where Eugene Sanfilippo stood, at the edge of a
new Ground Zero, a mayor, a president's spokesman and a slew
of FAA officials were urging us to think "accident."
But they were not standing in Rockaway Beach.
They did not lose neighbors and friends across the bay in
Manhattan on Sept. 11. Black crepe still hangs here, along with
the memories of funerals for roughly 80 cops, firefighters and
stockbrokers.
To look into Eugene Sanfilippo's eyes was to see there were no
coincidences.
"Every day," he said, "I fear more and more for the safety of my
family. Why should we be made to suffer this way?"
Tommy Rayder, who works at JFK Airport, kept looking past the
fire barricades, toward a place where the autumn leaves had been
burnt off the trees.
The homes that were gone belonged to neighbors Tommy knew,
"because in this part of the city, we all know everybody."
"I want to believe it was mechanical. I'm hoping it was an accident.
These days," Tommy Rayder sighed, "an accident is what you
pray for.
"That's a weird thing to say isn't it? Here, a jet plane comes down
in the middle of a neighborhood, and you pray it's an accident
because you can't bear to think they'd do it again to us.
"Not here, not in Rockaway. You figure it couldn't happen again
cause we already suffered enough."
Standing a few feet away, James Gill tried as best he could to
comfort his wife who appeared to be deep in the throes of this new
suffering.
"We are up on the Cross Bay Bridge," James Gill said, "driving
over from Richmond Hill to look at a house.
"My wife saw the whole thing. What she saw was an explosion,
way forward on the engines, sort of just behind the cockpit.
"I had to pull over, just there on the bridge. Amanda was hysterical.
She dialed 911 on the cell phone, and just started to scream, `Help
me! Help me!' "
After being rocked by the sound of an initial explosion, James Gill
said he looked up to see American Flight 587 in flames and
attempting to bank, only to wind up in a flat death spiral.
"I was in munitions in both the Army and also the Navy. I know
what I heard and what I saw. That was no mechanical problem. No
way!"
Howard Greenberg rushed home from his law office in Manhattan
to find his wife shell-shocked.
After seeing the plane fall, and believing it was going to kill both
her and her children, Howard Greenberg said his wife spent the
next few horrific hours running over body parts in the direction of
her neighbors' burning homes. She was carrying blankets and
water.
"I'm afraid," Howard Greenberg said, "that my wife believes this is
another incident. She'd probably tell you that herself if she was
able to talk. I'm afraid that's impossible.
"Personally I might like to believe that it was something else, but
when you've been told that this whole area is being considered as
a crime scene, and that FBI agents are looking in your yard and on
your roof for evidence, for pieces of jet wreckage or human beings,
then it becomes hard to make a case for coincidence.
"Now that all may change, but right now this is simply too much to
fathom."
After being told to vacate her home, Lilly Reynolds looked into the
faces of the strangers swarmed around her.
"You know, after so many of our neighbors and friends died in
September we were just getting back to some idea of normal, then
this happens.
"My God, you say, they've done it again. What else are we
supposed to think?"
Ask any lawyer, judge, or prosecutor.
Eyewitness accounts are used every day in criminal and civil trials.
The government even has a witness protection program.
Loose nuts sink ships.
If you could just look into his eyes, you would realize that there is no way this was an accident.
But this doesn't deter most Freepers from yelling, "The Feds are lying, the Feds are lying". We have already heard different "eyewitnesses" tell differing stories. Plus, this is New York. I would bet many are still scared sh!tless. Heightened emotions cause mistakes. Freepers usually frown upon kneejerk reactions. Not this time apparently.
Not necessarily. Depends on what stuff is in the tail and what it connects to. You can't forget the hydraulics and electronics that are in planes, and what happens to them when parts get ripped off the plane is usually bad. For example the infamous DC10 engine falling off incident of the late '70s. The DC10 was a magnificent plane and could survive the loss of 2 out of 3 engines (actually part of the training for that plane was that if a wing engine cacked to power down the surviving wing engine, run off of the tail engine which would be easier to steer with because it was centered horizontally on the plane which wing engines aren't). Problem was "loss" didn't include "fall off". When the fateful engine actually fell off the plane it ripped huge chunks of the hydraulics and electronics out with it (they're just hoses and wires after all, nothing super special about them), this yanked out enough of the control system that none of the surfaces were responsive, thus the plane became an unguided missile (with uneven thrust because an engine had just fallen off).
Now you're going to say that's not an explosion, and you're right. But, that's also just a wing engine. A lot of important electronic hubs are in the tail, because the tail is generally the safest part of an aircraft, it makes sense to put stuff in there. One of the things generally in the tail is the FDR, the FDR connects to probes and sensors all over the plane, it is literally wired up to everything. What happens when you yank that sucker out with the same kind of force that crippled the DC10 20+ years ago? Power surges are a safe bet. Power surges have a tendency to lead to sparks. Sparks in fuel chambers are very bad.
Now, I'm not saying that IS the answer. Not really even saying it could be the answer. What I am saying is that when you start yanking parts off of planes all kinds of stuff can happen (remember, planes are designed around the idea of surviving system failure, not violent system removal, there's a built in assumption that by the time parts are falling off the plane is already SOL), and you quite simply cannot say without equivocation that explosions aren't on that list of possible repercussions.
Hadn't thought of that...*grin*
Anyway, what does it matter? The government's handling it and how they conduct the investigation is none of your damn business anyway unless you work for the NTSB.
So...relax, everybody! Go book a flight to Vegas!
This was why one engine was separate of the crash....so they said.... Then the other engine was found at a different location....the government explanation then went a flock of birds were ingested causing one engine to fail causing the plane to violently rotate which caused the good engine to fling off the wing......
Oops! initial engine inspection showed no damage from either uncontained failure or bird ingestion....
Then were told that the pilot dumped his fuel into the bay knowing there was a problem and hoped to circle to land......The voice recorder proved that wrong.....Also, the Airbus300 doesn't have fuel dump capability.
Then the tail and part of a wing was found in the bay, looking cleanly sheared.....(explains the fuel in the bay)
Now were being told wake turbulence from the preceding departing jet was the cause, even though separation was an additional 20 seconds that day......
Wake turbulence can be a factor in landings when the plane is close to the ground but will not cause a Airbus 300 to breakapart in flight.....
Gee, all the baggage matched didn't it???? Although I didn't notice a lot of terrorist getting out of the planes on 9/11 either.....
If the word bomb is mentioned the stockmarket nosedives, several thousand airline employees lose their jobs and the airline/tourist industry will come completely apart.....Possibly plunging the US into a deep recession and the world into a depression......
The pressure on our government is enormous to limit the damage.....Does it matter whether a public proclamation is made?
The passengers are still dead, the same government resources would be committed........A little lie wouldn't hurt would it? Especially since people are so receptive to believe it.....
NeverGore
Yeah, and the trade towers came down because a spider got tangled in his web and kicked too hard against the building.
Everytime I read about people painting corrosive agents on the plane (which is entirely plausible), I remember that scene.
I'm sure the mechanic crews and airport security videos are getting a thorough examination.
Ask any lawyer, judge, or prosecutor. Eyewitness accounts are used every day in criminal and civil trials.
Hell, yes! I'm appalled by how many people here have suddenly decided to play the old, two-bit Public Defender routine, trying to convince others that an eyewitness "didn't see what he thought he saw." It's one thing to say that sometimes eyewitnesses err--it's something entirely different---and wholly insidious---to cop the attitude that eyewitness testimony ipso facto has to completely discounted.
Maybe it's due to some kind of corrupt psychological syndrome in the wake of the Fl. 800 cover-up...
We did a test in my psych class (based on a semi-famous test done years earlier) that really showed just how crappy human memory really is. In this test we're shown "live footage" of a car accident then given a sheet with 10 questions about the accident, all short answer stuff. There were a couple of "seed" questions in there, things phrased to push you towards changing your memory of the accident. Then we collated the answers and rewatched the the accident. My favorite question was "did the pickup truck in the accident have a gun wrack?", only one person in class (about 40, no I wasn't the smart one) answered correctly, which was: what pickup truck, there weren't any. No that's a little unsubtle, but it's lack of subtlety illustrates the point: 39 out of 40 people had their memories edited to include a non-existent pickup because the question made them decide they were wrong.
Keep that in mind when you're on a jury. Eyewitness testimony ain't worth squat. But people worship it.
Never listen to anybody who hasn't held the wreckage in their hands and under their microscopes.
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