January 14, 2012 at 4:35 am
Thirty years ago today, a heavy snowstorm descended upon the Washington, D.C., area. My daily drive home from college, which usually took 45 minutes at the most on a bad day, took two hours. (Ironically, the only cars I saw abandoned were a Saab and a Volvo.) When I finally got home, I flipped on the radio in the kitchen and heard that an airplane had hit the 14th Street Bridge! I called out to my parents, ran to the living room, and turned on our big Zenith color TV. Through the heavy snow, we saw the ghostly images of a U.S. Park Police Jet Ranger and a USAF CH-3 searching for and pulling survivors out of the freezing Potomac River.
The airplane was a Boeing 737, Air Florida Flight 90. This is its story:
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=41&sid=2705033
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Florida_Flight_90
And no sooner had that happened, there was a fatal crash on the Metro, Washington’s subway. A terrible day indeed.