Toll at least 77 after jet hits Washington road bridge

Press, 15 January 1982, Page 1

Toll at least 77 after jet hits Washington road bridge

NZPA-Reuter Washington At least 77 people were feared dead yesterday after an Air Florida jetliner sheared through cars on a busy bridge during a snowstorm and plunged into the ice-covered Potomac River.

At least 12 of the airline passengers were missing when rescue work was called off for the night at 10 p.m. because of the freezing weather and darkness.

The police reported 11 survivors from wrecked vehicles and five from the plane, which was carrying 71 passengers and five’ crew, according to a revised airline count.

Officials said they believed a total of 77 people had died, including six motorists, and another 12 were missing after the first airline disaster in the capital in three decades.

The Boeing 737 hit the 14th Street bridge, which was jammed with homebound Government workers sent home early because of snowstorms blanketing much of the east coast.

Rescue teams in helicopters dragged some of the survivors to the shore on life preservers. In one dramatic scene, a fireman dived into the icy water to pull out a woman, later identified as a crew member, just as she was slipping under an ice floe.

In an unrelated accident less than an hour after the crash, three were killed when a subway train was derailed under the Smithsonian Institution near the bridge, officials said.

It was the first fatal accident since the Metro system began running in 1975.’

Because of the two accidents and another paralysing snowstorm predicted during the night. President Reagan

and the Mayor of Washington. Mr Marion Barry, ordered all non-essential Government and city employees to stay home’today. The bridge which the Air Florida plane struck before plunging into the Potomac serves as a main artery from Washington to the Pentagon and into the northern Virginia suburbs.

One onlooker. Lloyd Shelton. a sailor, said: "I was cruising down here very slowly and heard a big roar. Everything shattered and the cars over here were smashed. I said. ‘Oh God. there’s a plane there'." A private pilot. Eric Blackwelder, who was driving along the Virginia bank of the river, said he saw the 737 "descending rapidly in a nose-high attitude. It w r as on its way down, and then the nose hit and it slipped ... into the river." The crash was the first in the United States in 1982, the first big accident involving a United States carrier since October 1979, and the first in Air Florida's eight-year history.

It was also the first commercial airliner crashing involving fatalities since President Reagan last August dismissed about 13,000 Federal air traffic controllers for breaking Government rules by striking. The Federal Aviation Administration said air control did not appear to be involved in yesterday's crash.

All the main hospitals in the Washington area were put on emergency status to

handle casualties and urgent appeals for blood were made on television and radio. As night fell, hospitals had received only a handful of survivors pulled from the river and brought in with injured motorists from the bridge and injured from the subway crash. George Patterson, a local television cameraman, said he and his partner filmed four survivors' being rescued from the tail section of the plane. He said another survivor had been rescued earlier. "It is hard to see how there could be any others unless there was an air pocket in the plane." he said. The plane split when it hit the ice-choked water and the tail section floated for about 20 minutes before going completely under. Other pieces of wreckage sank immediately or floated briefly. Before plunging into the frigid river, the tail end of the big jet crashed into the 14th Street Bridge, shearing the tops off half a dozen cars, turning a truck over on its side, and pulling a big section of guardrail into the water. Swirling snow and bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic severely hampered the police, fire, and military vehicles as they tried to rush to the scene of the accident. The crash was reported to the authorities at 4.5 p.m. local time, only minutes after the plane had taken off from National Airport about 400 metres down-river.

Twenty minutes later, the airport closed for the night and most flights were transferred to the much bigger Dulles International Airport, about 64km away.