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?"
There was no evidence in the wreckage of a missile type explosion -- which would have rather definite characteristics. Instead there was just the heaving type low velocity explosion of the central fuel tank -- an FAE (fuel air explosion.)
Funny you should say that about FR going to the dogs with people going along with the news as delivered. This thread has a lot of tin foil suppliers but mostly over the past few days I've seen FReepers questioning the accident theory six ways from Sunday and posting good information to back up theories they have.
Part of the problem here is my zeroing in on a witness report in the middle of a human interest story. The context doesn't discredit it, but some people here don't like this kind of stuff and throw the whole thing out.
Chin up.
And there's this. I have seen lots of comments over the past few days to the effect that this crash probably wasn't a terrorist act because it wasn't a big enough event, the Dominican Republic didn't resonate as a target, no one has taken credit for it, and so on. Seems to me it's had a powerful impact on the nations nerves, as reflected in the dropping number of Thanksgiving travelers and polls saying people don't feel safe in airplanes. If terrorists are responsible, then the message is not 'Hey, we can kill lots of you in a spectacular way' but 'We can strike you when we want, where we want, even right out of JFK again, despite all your new security.' Raising that kind of frightening possibility is the essence of terrorism. I'm not saying this was definitely a terrorist act. I'm saying if it was, it's succeeding.
Is it possible -- and I'll admit this is pure conjecture at this point -- that some of the passengers and/or crew members hadn't been shopping like they should have been? Have several of them not purchased a car recently?
I want to know why no one in the media is asking these questions.
"Oh wait! That only happens at night doesn't it?"
But as we all know, that's the only safe time for our astronauts to visit the sun.
Is it possible that this works two ways? Is it possible that people from the sun are visiting earth, and attacking the planes?
Oh, right. The incidents happened during the day. Well, scratch that idea.
Raised on genetically altered corn.
Look, don't go fitting me for a tinfoil hat, but a while ago, when I was in the National Guard and was givin annual training which included anti-terroist/sabotage courses, one of the things we were warned about was a chemical applicator, which looked just like a felt-tipped marker. It contained a corrosive which, when applied to the aluminum skin or structural members of an aircraft, caused all but invisible damage, weakening the metal in a way that would cause it to break along the line drawn with the 'marker'. The break looked just like a metal fatigue break, unless examined microscopically and tested chemically, and even then it was hard to detect. I doubt if the training officers were spoofing us; they were serious, but I don't know about the validity of their information.
Google query: "Liquid Metal Embrittlement Agent"
I don't care who you listen to. You'll believe the ones you want to believe.
I am not surprised the conspiracies started before the fire was out.
Me? I think I'll believe the one who called 911 and screamed "Help me! Help me!" while sitting safely on a bridge.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ann+coulter+picture+jpeg
Not according to our government AND THIS.
Our country is at war and inciting suspicion, fear and hatred of our government aids, abetts and gives comfort to our enemies.
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