Al-Ahram Weekly | War | State of emergency

		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 15 - 21 November 2001 Issue No.560
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

State of emergency
It couldn't have come at a worse time -- but why did it have to come at all?

NEW YORKERS and American officials found themselves feeling a remarkable amount of relief in the face of some frighteningly grim news on Tuesday, when initial reports from investigators into Monday's American Airlines crash indicated a mechanical failure. Traumatised by the 11 September attacks and groaning under a surreal atmosphere of bravado mixed with stifling paranoia, New Yorkers were praying that the crash of AA flight 587 from Kennedy airport to Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, was not a repeat of the devastating terrorist hijackings two months ago.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced on Monday evening that recordings on the plane's cockpit voice recorder indicated nothing unusual, leading investigators to assume, for now, that the crash was an accident. The crucial flight data recorder -- the other so-called black box -- had not yet been found on Tuesday evening.
The Airbus A300 was sent into a nose dive only minutes after takeoff, plummeting into the quaint middle-class neighbourhood of the Rockaways, in Queens, near the western tip of Long Island. Residents described hearing what sounded like the sonic boom of the Concorde when the plane broke up, and witnesses reportedly saw one of the plane's engine break off in flames. A cruel shower of twisted metal rained down on the Rockaways, plunging this New York City suburb into more unimaginable grief.
Though they have silently been bracing for another terrorist tragedy after the cataclysmic World Trade Center attacks, followed by the quietly subversive anthrax scare, New Yorkers are finding it difficult to follow the advice of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to go about their normal activities and "suspend judgement." Almost 100 residents of the Rockaways -- among them 75 firefighters -- died in the 11 September attacks.
As New York's beleaguered firemen rushed to the scene, they found themselves confronted with an all-too-familiar scene. Rescuers quickly realised that survivors would be a miracle as they pulled charred bodies from the burning remains of fuel-drenched houses in the densely populated area. A local school -- empty, as people were home for the Veteran's Day holiday -- became a makeshift morgue. The site is strewn with debris, making it impossible for panicked residents to forget the calamity.
The daily shuttle to Santo Domingo, which services New York's large Dominican community, was overbooked, meaning the plane was filled to capacity: 251 passengers and nine crew members, all of whom died in the crash. Six people were reported missing in the Belle Harbor neighbourhood of the Rockaways peninsula. Giuliani said on Tuesday that the bodies of 262 victims had been recovered.
Following the crash Monday morning, the shell-shocked US quickly moved into a high state of alert. Giuliani shut down all New York area airports and sealed off the city, closing all tunnels and bridges. Absent any overt indications of criminal activity, airports reopened later in the day, but investigators have not yet ruled out sabotage as a possible cause.
Much speculation has centred on the plane's engine -- a General Electric CF-6, which has been cited in the past as possibly unsafe. Last month the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) singled out the engine, -- used in more than 1,000 aircraft worldwide and defended by GE as "phenomenally reliable" -- for more frequent safety inspections, but the order had not yet taken effect. Failures in the CF-6 were exposed last year and the FAA warned that more comprehensive inspections should be applied, as failure in the engine during flight could cause metal fragments to tamper with the control system or fuel lines.

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