Kool Aid Anyone?
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?"
Explosion way forward of wing/engine line... so the vertical stabilizer, at the opposite end of the A/C comes off!!!! His news room is probably proud of him for his deathless prose!
To look into Eugene Sanfilippo's eyes was to see there were no coincidences.
Anyone wonder what I mean about idiot reporters assuming opinion and delivering it as fact!
You're right. The Feds would never lie. I believe every word they say.
It's been in all the tehnical journals.
The first thing we heard from these folks, in the face of many eyewitness reports that the plane blew up in midair, was that "terrorism is not suspected". Next we hear that since there is no evidence of terrorism, there's no need to investigate the matter as anything more than an accident. "Uncontained engine failure" we were told. This is why the eyewitnesses saw an explosion and the plane wing and fuselage in flames before it folded up and fell to the ground. Not terrorists, you tinfoilers! People questioned how such a failure could rip the plane apart. "It certainly could rip the plane apart!" the experts such as yourself re-assured. But there are no penetrations of the cowling around the engine. Uncontained failure is ruled out.
OK then, how about a goose? It was obviously a goose strike or something similar that caused the engines to fall off. A goose will not usually rip a plane apart, but hey, it sometimes happens. Anyone who thinks this was some kind of terrorist act is a kook! A goose is a much more likely explanation. But there's no evidence of geese or engine failure.
Ok then, how about a "wake" from a plane that took off 2m 20s earlier? Those wakes are quite vicious. Strong swirling winds from a preceding takeoff must have ripped the beautiful though extremely delicate Airbus into chunks. 2m 20s is an unreasonably long period of time for the wake to have propagated?
Ok then, the Airbus must have caught up to the plane that was ahead of it. Not that such an event would have turned up on the control tower radar. See, even CNN agrees, 2m 20s has now become 1m 30s and a catch-up!
Once the wake theory is discounted, perhaps NSTB/CNN will tell us that some heavy baggage must have shifted, or that an unusually large bug hit the windshield, causing the exact type of vibration needed to disintegrate the airframe kingpin that keeps the plane from blowing up.
People do not like being taken for fools. Given that crashing planes full of people and fuel has featured prominently in terrorist activities in the last few years, and since the U.S. is under attack by terrorists, and since everyone has been beseeched again and again to be on the highest possible permanent state of alert it might seem logical to suspect and investigate this as a deliberate act. That's just plain nutty hey Paul? Why don't we have an inquiry into Bigfoot... idiot.
Who said they always lie? It is not "extremist," or "anti-government wacko," or "tinfoil hat," or "conspiracy theorist," or any of your DNC focus-group tested words to have serious questions about the government's conduct of this investigation and the "mechanical failure spin" that's been put out by it almost from the moment Fl. 587 impacted. Quit pigeon-holing doubters of the government releases as "crazies," and chances are that fewer people will call you a "government lackey."
terrorists
box cutters
funny mail
black holes in skin
speeding hazmats
moose
Gremlins
Who said they always lie?
Who said they never lie? Geez, did you overlook the point, just so you could post that breathless rant.
Quit pigeon-holing doubters of the government releases as "crazies,"
Find a post where I’ve done that, and I won’t think you’re crazy.
and chances are that fewer people will call you a "government lackey."
Nobody’s done that yet, you can be the first. Go ahead, I’m waiting.
(I secretly agree with your posting but I can't admit it. Sorry)
If they called for a grounding of all Airbus Aircraft, Airbus would have no choice but to state the crash was not related to the aircraft......
This would cause consumers to withdraw from flights.....
Leading to a market retraction and related finacial problems.....
The market doesn't care what caused the crash, only how the public percieves it....
NeverGore
Interesting footnote--In the parrt I read about line-ups, people were much likelier to make a false ID if there was a suggestion that the perp was in the line-up. It was as though they thought they were "supposed to" find him. When there was no indication one way or the other, their accuracy was nearly 100%. The researchers have tried to educate police departments around the country to improve their ID success and cut down on bad arrests but without much success. Sorry I can't tell you the article, but it may have been in The New Yorker.
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