Rural Pa. Residents Reach Out to Investigators

As experts examine every square inch, reminders of grief and heroism arise

by Mike Billington
The Delaware News Journal
September 16, 2001
http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2001/09/16ruralparesident.html

 

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. -- In a region of small communities, United Airlines Flight 93 created its own little village after crashing nose-first into a hilltop field.

Nearly 500 investigators and police officers have labored around the clock to either comb through the wreckage of the hijacked Boeing 757 or stand guard to protect the scene.

Residents in the rural western Pennsylvania area have taken to treating the crash-site team as family.

There is even a graveyard of sorts - a field of small flags of multiple colors that mark wreckage and the remains of 45 people killed in the crash.

From a distance, it looks like a field of flowers.

The pace of daily life is nothing like that going on in New York City or Washington, D.C., where jets hijacked by terrorists also struck. On this windy strip of earth atop an old strip mine, there is no hope for survivors. The adrenaline that once fueled searchers is long gone.

In its place, investigators and residents have found solidarity in the stories of heroism by passengers aboard Flight 93 and in a crash that could not have happened in a more random place.

After the San Francisco-bound jetliner left Newark, N.J., it turned near Cleveland and headed toward Washington, D.C., about the same time another hijacked airliner crashed into the Pentagon.

Some passengers called loved ones, telling them they knew about the World Trade Center attacks.

"The passengers on that plane decided to fight back against their hijackers," Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge said during a Friday-night candlelight vigil before a crowd of about 3,000 in Somerset. "They undoubtedly saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives in the process. They sacrificed themselves for others - the ultimate sacrifice."

Red Cross volunteer John Earwood said residents "are angry and they want to do whatever they can to bring the people who did this terrible thing to justice."

Sandwiches and tea

In the area around the crash site, some residents stop by every morning to leave keys to their homes so some of the nearly 280 state troopers guarding the scene can take a break during their 12-hour shifts - or at least have access to indoor plumbing.

"They tell our people that, if they need anything, to just go in the house and get it," state police Maj. Lyle Szupinka said.

One woman offered to put three troopers up in her home, Salvation Army volunteer Nena Lensbouer said.

"She told us that she has a four-bedroom home," Lensbouer said. "She just wanted to do whatever she could."

Residents have made sandwiches and iced tea and delivered them to the crash site daily to supplement food and drink from the Salvation Army and Red Cross.

"In New York, people can get involved in other ways but this is all we can do," said Earwood, a Vietnam veteran.

Restaurants have donated food and drinks. Companies from as far away as Pittsburgh, about 80 miles to the northwest, have donated cell phones to troopers so they can stay in contact with their families.

That's important, troopers said, because there are few pay phones in rural southwestern Pennsylvania. And many of the troopers live and work several counties away from the crash site.

"We can't help in the investigation," said Earwood, "but we sure can help the investigators."

Cheered by heroism

Because their pace has been intense and done in a remote location, workers at the Pennsylvania crash site have had difficulty keeping up with developments elsewhere.

They and nearby residents routinely have been cheered by word-of-mouth stories of the final acts of the passengers of Flight 93.

Volunteers at the crash site led a prayer service before the Friday-night vigil. An hour before the vigil began, programs for the ceremony were gone, as the expected crowd of about 500 swelled into the thousands, arriving to pay homage to the crash victims and to the still-unknown dead at the Pentagon and in New York.

Family members related to a flight attendant aboard the plane visited the crash site Friday. Joe Hopkins, a United spokesman, said about 20 family members of other victims were staying at a nearby hotel.

Investigators said they still have much to learn from the wreckage of Flight 93 and expect to work at the crash site for up to five weeks.

"We're looking for anything at all, even the smallest fragment, that will help us understand what happened," FBI Special Agent Bill Crowley said.

Investigators know this much: Flight 93 left Newark, N.J., at 8:01 a.m. Tuesday. The San Francisco-bound aircraft turned near Cleveland and headed toward Washington.

Investigators have voice recordings of some passengers who called loved ones on cellular phones, saying they knew about the World Trade Center attacks and planned to confront their hijackers.

What happened after that is a mystery, and is a focus of the investigation.

Searchers on Thursday recovered the flight-data recorder, which monitored the aircraft's altitude, speed and route. Investigators could use that information and the cellular-telephone calls to better understand the sequence of events, authorities have said.

Late Friday, the cockpit voice recorder was recovered. Crowley said the plane's voice recorder, designed to record the final 30 minutes of conversation in the cockpit, appeared to be in relatively good condition. It was sent to a National Transportation Safety Board laboratory in Washington to be analyzed.

Authorities said they hoped to retrieve information from the so-called "black boxes" soon.

The boxes are crucial to learning what happened and where the hijackers were headed, said U.S. Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat whose district includes the crash site in rural western Pennsylvania.

'Extreme fragmentation'

With the boxes in hand, investigators have returned to the tedium of processing wreckage that, in some cases, is no larger than a shred of nylon.

The 200 crash-site investigators have been arriving at the location just after sunrise each morning in a convoy of pickup trucks, vans and SUVs.

At the end of Little Prairie Lane, they have climbed out of the vehicles, stretched and talked about the day's objectives. That done, the searchers got down to the business of methodically searching every square inch of the site.

Many factors have been complicating their work.

The hijacked jetliner slammed into the earth nose-first at more than 200 mph, according to estimates by the National Transportation Safety Board and other experts. When it hit, the aircraft dug a crater more than 20 feet deep and 20 feet wide.

"In a crash like this we can expect extreme fragmentation," said Dennis Dirkmaat, a forensic anthropologist. A professor at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pa., he is a member of one of several search teams combing the site.

Most of the pieces that remain of the jet are small. The biggest are the size of a telephone book, said Ed Persuhn, a member of the nearby Hooversville Volunteer Fire Department, which responded to the crash.

Many of the smaller fragments - those the size of a dime or smaller - are covered by the dirt left from a huge cloud created by the plane's impact.

Most of the airliner debris is contained within a 100-square-yard area around the crater. A secondary debris field stretches for a square mile beyond that.

Two days after the crash, investigators broadened their search to a community eight miles away, where residents found bits of wreckage.

That wreckage probably was spread by the cloud created when the plane crashed and dispersed by a 10 mph southeasterly wind, Crowley said.

Some smaller pieces and papers belonging to passengers might have been carried even farther, Crowley said National Transportation Safety Board officials have told him.

A methodical routine

Despite the obstacles, Dirkmaat, the forensic anthropologist, is optimistic. There are highly trained, experienced investigators on the search teams, he said.

Dirkmaat has investigated crash sites in Guam and Rhode Island, as well as the crash of USAir Flight 427 near Pittsburgh in 1994. He recently wrote a search protocol used nationwide by airplane-crash investigators.

His team includes archaeologists, dentists and X-ray technicians.

The investigators follow a methodical routine that includes:

• Searching in 20-square-yard grids. Investigators comb each grid, slowly walking shoulder to shoulder across it.

• Marking each piece of wreckage or human remains with flags. The color of the flag depends on the type of evidence.

• Photographing each piece of wreckage or human remains. A written description is entered into a search logbook, Dirkmaat said.

• Bagging and tagging evidence and taking it to a central collection point. Each evidence bag is assigned a number that is entered into a computerized record. Each piece then is sent to a specific team of forensic specialists for identification.

Human remains, for example, are sent to a temporary morgue at a Pennsylvania National Guard armory in Somerset. There, specialists from as far away as Texas try to identify the remains, Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller said.

"It's heartbreaking work," he said, "but we have a duty to the investigation and to the families of the victims to do the very best job that we can."

Specialists at the temporary morgue will use DNA testing and X-rays to help identify the remains. They also will take fingerprints, compare the ridge pattern on the soles of feet with birth records and interview family members to determine whether the victims had any distinguishing marks or characteristics.

Investigators want to find remains for all 45 people killed in the crash. The remains eventually will be turned over to family members.

Flags and ribbons

As the searchers have toiled, residents have planted American flags along the roads that crisscross the cornfields of this part of Pennsylvania.

The flags are stuck on fence posts, in cornfields, in front yards and on mailboxes. Motorists fly them from the antennas of their cars and trucks. Store owners have them in front of their businesses.

Lensbouer, the Salvation Army volunteer and a 35-year-old part-time cook who was one of the first on the scene after Flight 93 crashed, summoned the courage to return Thursday.

Before she went to work as a volunteer, Lensbouer said she tied a yellow ribbon and a black ribbon around a tree at her Lambertsville home. The yellow was for people still missing and the black was for those who died, she said.

She also flew an American flag.

Near where she worked Thursday, several Pennsylvania Department of Transportation workers dug two deep holes about a quarter-mile from the search area and erected two large flagpoles - one for the American flag and one for the Pennsylvania flag.

When the flags were sent up the poles, troopers pulling guard duty saluted. A small cluster of Red Cross and Salvation Army volunteers placed their hands over their hearts.

As she watched, Lensbouer paused and said in words that were barely audible, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands - one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

 

© Copyright 2001

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