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A friend sent me a link to an AM Law Daily interview of a lawyer who was on Flight 1549, the plane that landed on the Hudson.
It goes into more detail about what it was like inside, and man oh man. Scarier than I thought, and I already thought it was scary. It kills me how he got right back on another plane. And he was so no-nonsense about it.
Some people are so resilient.
This is a picture of the B-25 bomber that crashed into the Empire State Building on the morning of July 28, 1945. They got lost in the fog apparently, and went lower to where it was clear and this is the result. 14 people died. The description I read here sounds so 9/11 and so sad. The part about Joe Fountain:
“The plane exploded within the building. There were five or six seconds—I was tottering on my feet trying to keep my balance—and three-quarters of the office was instantaneously consumed in this sheet of flame. One man was standing inside the flame. I could see him. It was a co-worker, Joe Fountain. His whole body was on fire. I kept calling to him, ‘Come on, Joe; come on, Joe.’ He walked out of it.”
But died several days later.
Oh wow. I’m reading one of the forums on the Empire State Building website and picking up some fascinating tidbits like:
“My mother worked for the University of California at the time of the plane crash. They were on the 67th floor (I think) and under tight security as this was an R & D office for the Manhattan Project (atomic bomb). They thought they were personally under attack because of their work and were rushed out, with everyone else, by what was then the Secret Service. Everyone working in the offices had top secret clearance. She saw parts of the plane drop from above into a flower shop down below. According to what she heard at the time the plane was NOT off course but simply on a joy ride to tour manhattan when they got lost in the fog.”
There are more posts from relatives of people who were there, including relatives of Joe Fountain.
God I love the internet.
I like the part where he said:
“But I can’t let my life be run by a bunch of geese.”
My mother was at work in the ESB when the crash occured.
Wow David! Did she tell you any stories.
Lianne, yeah, me too.
Yeah, she did tell me stories…but she passed ten years back…and they are lost to history.
What I do remember is that there was no mass panic…as many tenants were not immediately aware of the situation. Seems that the structure was far more rigid than the late WTC. The base of the building is far larger in area than the setback where the 85th floor was located.
Intially, the autopsy of the pilot and co-pilot pointed to the ‘fact’ that the crew was drunk…although the presence of alcohol was later attributed to de-icing fluid located within the plane.
david
Oh that’s interesting. Because on the Empire State building website I was pointing to they were all saying that they were drunk, like it was still a fact. Poor guys.
Also, I read that Osama Bin Laden studied engineering at some point and so he knew that the WTC was not as rigid as the Empire State Building. I don’t know how true that is, though.