‘Deafening roar, then silence’

Press, 15 January 1982, Page 1

‘Deafening roar, then silence’

NZPA Arlington It hit the bridge with a deafening roar and then, suddenly. there was silence. There was no sound at all. those who watched said later, as the Air Florida 737 jet glided into the river, skidded across the gray ice. and sank slowly into the icy waters. Behind it. a big truck, its top sheared off. teetered on the bridge over the Potomac River. A half-dozen cars, their boots and bonnets crushed, were strewn across the roadway. Through a 12m gash in • the bridge railing only a slender piece of the crushed jet was visible. There were no sounds of panic. There was only an eerie silence and long, slender fissures in the ice. all pointing to a torn oval of water.

“I heard it coming." said Lloyd Greger, a Justice Department employee who was travelling along the north span of the 14th Street bridge only moments before the crash. "I couldn't see anything. It was snowing. Then I saw the plane coming out of the sky. The nose was up. the tail was down. It was so loud I couldn’t hear myself scream. "Then." Mr Greger said, still shaken by what he had seen, "there was no sound. You couldn't even hear the plane go into the water." After the silence came the cacophony of rescue: shouts for help, shouts for comfort: the whap of helicopter rotors and the blare of sirens. Municipal. parks, and military emergency squads went into action. Hampered by the cold and snow, and prevented by

the ice from moving swiftly to the crash site, they searched for survivors in the river between the two spans of the bridge. For those in the water it was not only a struggle for survival from the plane crash but a struggle for survival against the elements. Two firemen dived into the water and grabbed a woman who had moved quickly from the wreckage. A park policeman hauled a few more by cable. A helicopter dragged a number of survivors ashore, only to lose them and to try again. By the time the sun had set, the surrounding bridges and the Virginia shore were lit with torches, but there was little more that the rescue squads could do.