How Come No One Knows About This? (1 Viewer)

[The Mongoose]

Pan Am Flight 759 is another disaster that few remember. It crashed in Kenner


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_759


153 died when the plane crashed on take off from the NOLA airport in 1982.

That wiki page says 5 houses were destroyed and 6 more were damaged. That can't be right.

My mother and I were driving near there at the time, arriving at the scene before the fire trucks. There were entire city blocks on fire. How can a 727 plane crash into a residential neighborhood and only damage 11 houses?

I googled it and found a video from channel 8's newscast. They were saying that 4 entire blocks were destroyed. That jibes more with my memory.

Also, I would have thought that more than 8 people on the ground died, but I guess that info was easily identified from crash records; can't see the wikipedia page being that off.

 

[uproar90]

That wiki page says 5 houses were destroyed and 6 more were damaged. That can't be right.

My mother and I were driving near there at the time, arriving at the scene before the fire trucks. There were entire city blocks on fire. How can a 727 plane crash into a residential neighborhood and only damage 11 houses?

I googled it and found a video from channel 8's newscast. They were saying that 4 entire blocks were destroyed. That jibes more with my memory.

Also, I would have thought that more than 8 people on the ground died, but I guess that info was easily identified from crash records; can't see the wikipedia page being that off.

My sister was big into theater back then, and she had rehearsal for some play @ the Little Kenner Theater... I don't remember all of the details, but I recall someone that was supposed to be in the play left a few minutes early and wound up caught in the middle of it somehow (learned this later).
We left 10-15 minutes later and just like any obnoxious brats, we saw smoke and we asked my mom to drive towards it so we could see what was going on ... We still had no idea what had happened.

She drove down W. Metairie and we were right along side of an absolute horror... I remember my mom was crying and told us to put our heads down and not look @ anything. The main detail that I'll probably never forget is looking up @ one point to see a woman w/ blond hair, dressed like she had been lounging around the house (shorts & t-shirt), running barefoot down the sidewalk hysterically screaming for someone...

That was a bad time...

...and I also remember there being more than just a few houses damaged. Like you said, a 727 crashed through a residential neighborhood.

Edit: This is not a good picture at all (old newspaper article), but it shows an aerial view of the crash site. Definitely looks like more than 5 destroyed and 6 damaged.

 

[Mr. Blue Sky]

ferry disaster happened 35 yrs ago today.

 

[SaintArchieManning]

Pan Am Flight 759 is another disaster that few remember. It crashed in Kenner


Pan Am Flight 759 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


153 died when the plane crashed on take off from the NOLA airport in 1982.

Seriously?

NOBODY who is old enough to remember that crash would ever forget about it.

People born after, maybe, but nobody who was alive then and old enough to know what was going on could ever forget that disaster.

 

[SaintArchieManning]

This one has always disturbed me.

It's the fire at the Rault Center in the CBD.

Sadly, all but one of the people in this video died jumping from the burning building.

And my office is 3 blocks from this building and I see it every day. And it looks the same- its been unoccupied since then, or at least for as long as I can remember. It's hard to not think about what happened every time I see it.



<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jmHQjk6LzXA" allowfullscreen="" width="560" frameborder="0" height="315"></iframe>

 

[RussTKD]

Seriously?

NOBODY who is old enough to remember that crash would ever forget about it.

People born after, maybe, but nobody who was alive then and old enough to know what was going on could ever forget that disaster.

My Mom was a nurse, and was asked to go to the crash site to assist. She didn't because we had plans to go out of town that day. She talked to a co-worker the following Monday and all they essentially did was dig for bodies.

 

[LafourcheSaint]

What a strange coincidence that this thread is being bumped.

I'm giving a presentation in my aviation law class next week on Pan Am 759 and how that crashed changed the way the FAA monitors and alerts for wind shear and microbursts.

 

[Sarcastic]

Strange coincidence for me too, since I've had my head buried in the Picayune's archives for the last two weeks working on a history paper.

 

[Scott B]

What a strange coincidence that this thread is being bumped.

I'm giving a presentation in my aviation law class next week on Pan Am 759 and how that crashed changed the way the FAA monitors and alerts for wind shear and microbursts.

http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/07/crash071007.gif

 

[LafourcheSaint]

http://blog.nola.com/times-picayune/2007/07/crash071007.gif

Wow, thank you! I couldn't find an overview graphic and this is perfect. My eyes are shot running over the NTSB report (http://www.airdisaster.com/reports/ntsb/AAR83-02.pdf) combing out details, but having this really puts it to great perspective. You've made my night!


... It's also interesting to note how it states 15 houses were destroyed which seems a little more realistic than wikipedia.

 

[KikkomanSauce]

If only this book had been around then, lives may have been saved.

http://www.amazon.com/Avoid-Huge-Ships-John-Trimmer/dp/0870334336

You too can learn how to avoid these killing machines.

 

[FishinFool]

Had a conversation about Pan Am today. I stayed home from school that day. That neighborhood where it crashed used to remind me of Smurf Village

 

[Saintsfan22]

I was born in 91' and because of my parents I know about the pan am crash in fact when I was younger my mom took us back in the area where it happened talk about an erie feeling.
here's a vid of it I found on youtube its all in spanish at least I think anyway they show some footage from the area about 1:35 in.

Boeing explode em Nova Orleans e deixa 143 mortos (1982) - YouTube

 

[FLIPPY]

Had a conversation about Pan Am today. I stayed home from school that day. That neighborhood where it crashed used to remind me of Smurf Village

Dude, you had to go to summer school? One of those kids, huh?.....

 

[Mr. Blue Sky]

thought about this again with the recent ferry disaster in the news