glencar
Ex Member
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Federal investigators arrived in Clarence Center today to examine the smoldering wreckage of a commercial plane that crashed into a home just after 10:15 p.m. Thursday, immolating the aircraft and home and killing 50 people.
The first task for the 14 investigators will be retrieving the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder from the wreckage of the plane, which plunged into a home on Long Street.
Victims' bodies will also begin to be recovered from the site, with the aid of a medical examiner, said Steve Chealander, a National Transportation Safety Board member who arrived in the area early today to inspect the scene.
The dead include 49 passengers who were on board the plane and one man who was inside the home when the aircraft hit. They include "many" Buffalo-area residents, officials said.
Conditions at the scene will complicate the recovery effort, officials said.
"It's still very hot," said Chealander. "It was a major fire and explosion. There's a lot of carnage there."
The Continental Connection flight, No. 3407, had been headed into Buffalo from Newark when it suddenly fell from the sky and dived into a single-family house.
Onlookers -- and authorities -- were amazed that more homes were not destroyed.
"It's in that yard, basically," said Chealander. "It was a very compact area."
Eyewitnesses said the plane sounded odd before it crashed and seemed to strike directly into the home on Long Street.
"It was a bad, bad impact. It was hot, and the explosion was massive," said Clarence resident Tony Tatro, who was driving nearby at the time of the crash. "I couldn't see anyone surviving it."
The sickly glow from the burning wreckage could be seen for miles.
Names of the passengers on the plane were not being released immediately by the airline.
Gov. David A. Paterson planned to travel to the crash site today to inspect the scene personally.
The 50 dead included four on-duty crew members on the Continental plane, one off-duty crew member, as well as 44 people traveling toward Buffalo on business and pleasure trips.
Among the crash victims was Beverly Eckert, the widow of Sean Rooney, who was killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Eckert was traveling to Buffalo for a family celebration of what would have been her husband's 58th birthday.
Family members and friends identified two people believed to be on the plane as Ellyce Kausner, a graduate of Clarence High School and Canisius College, and Maddy Loftus, a Buffalo State College graduate who lives in New Jersey.
The crew members were identified as Capt. Marvin Renslow, pilot of the plane; Rebecca Shaw, first officer of the flight; and flight attendants Matilda Quintero and Donna Prisco.
Another employee of the airline, Capt. Joseph Zuffoletto, a Jamestown resident who was off-duty at the time, was also killed.
The fiery crash -- which stunned onlookers by its intensity and heat -- is the deadliest U.S. airline crash since November 2001, when American Airlines Flight 587 taking off from John F. Kennedy Airport.
Jaimeelynn Trujillo, a Clarence resident who lives directly behind the crash site and was evacuated by police in the moments after the crash, saw the immediate impact of the plane's hit first-hand and called it "horrifying."
She was also one of the few to see at least one of the occupants of the Long Street house -- the site where the plane crashed -- fleeing to safety.
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