Colext/Macondo
Cantina virtual de los COLombianos en el EXTerior
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Dice Leroy Sievers (Nightline):
I'm sure everyone's hearts just sank when the first reports came in. A
plane down. Another column of smoke rising over the New York skyline. Just
as each passing day promised a tiny incremental step back towards
normalcy, today's crash took us back to September 11th.
We don't know what happened. Eyewitnesses reported seeing one of the
engines fall off the plane just before it crashed. There is a report that
the pilot of a plane waiting to take off behind the American plane saw
smoke coming from one of the engines as it was taking off. Other
eyewitnesses reported hearing loud noises, and seeing explosions. One of
the things that you learn in situations like these is that eyewitness
reports can be wildly inaccurate.
But it's obvious this morning just how much this country has changed in
the last two months. Some of the first information came out of the
Pentagon. There were military jets flying what is called CAP, Combat Air
Patrol, over New York City. The pilots in those planes didn't see anything
before the crash. The City of New York has been virtually shut down,
bridges and tunnels closed, trains not running into the city.
And the real question for everyone is whether this was a terrorist attack.
There have been a number of statements saying it is likely that this was
an attack, and many more saying there is no indication that it was. But,
it is clearly way to soon to know what actually happened. What is
interesting is the relief that people feel every time a new report comes
out that tends towards a mechanical problem, rather than terrorism. Two
months ago, I don't think that people would have felt relief that there
was a catastrophic problem on a plane. I guess that's sort of like the
difference between "natural causes" and "murder." Our reaction to that
kind of mechanical problem would have been horror before September 11th,
now we seem relieved. Mechanical failure is something we can understand.
But will we ever really be satisfied with the final explanation, whatever
it is? I am sure that some of us will believe that the cause was
terrorism, even if the official explanation turns out to be something
different.
And what will today's tragedy do to an already floundering airline
industry? We're coming up on Thanksgiving, one of the busiest travel times
of the year. Are people canceling their plans as I write this? I'm sure a
lot of people are.
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