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Down below, on the barrier beach known as Fire Island, a 15-minute ferry ride from Long Island, Don and Judy Hester were at dinner. A friend had dropped by to tell them of a rare sight: a herd of white-tailed deer had gathered to forage nearby. Groups of two or three deer are common on Fire Island but a whole herd is unusual to see--even for the Hesters, who have lived there for 30 years. Taking their corn on the cob with them, the Hesters strolled up the the boardwalk leading over the sand dunes in front of their property to see if the deer were still within view. They were, grazing in the shadows as the sun began sinking into Long Island's Great South Bay behind them. The Atlantic, meanwhile, was turning violet in the gathering dusk, the lights of fishing boats just beginning to blink. Then, as the Hesters gazed at the small wonder, two fireballs burst out of the sky to the southeast. The deer scattered.
MAYDAY, MAYDAY
TWA's senior management had spent Wednesday celebrating in London. They had just announced a booming quarterly earnings report, increasing revenues more than 12% to almost $1 billion, including a nearly fourfold jump in earnings to over $25 million. It was a miraculous return from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in just a year's time. After a private victory dinner with champagne, ceo Jeffrey Erickson and corporate communications V.P. Mark Abels left the party to go to bed at the Savoy Hotel; they were scheduled to fly home the next day to TWA headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. Then the phone call came at 2:30 a.m.: one of the company's 15 Boeing 747s had gone down off Long Island.
In East Moriches, the town closest to the crash site in the Atlantic, residents and fishermen quickly headed out to find survivors. The crew of a National Guard C-130 practicing search-and-rescue procedures nearby had witnessed the crash, identified the wreckage and reported back to home base. Local law-enforcement and fire departments, large contingents from New York City and even rescue craft from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, responded to emergency calls.
When Cecilia Penney first saw the explosion, she thought, "Is this a nuclear war? It was like I was watching it on TV." Her husband Randy then joined volunteers on a small rescue fleet of six boats. "The water was on fire from the fuel," he says. Soon he and his friends had "pulled three bodies out of the water; two of them were still strapped to their seats. We had to get them out of there quick because we didn't want them to sink." Of the 18 people Randy saw pulled out of the water, about half had had their clothes blown off. One was a pretty girl in her early 20s. "I tried not to get a good look at them, at their faces," he says hesitantly. "I didn't have time to think about what I was seeing--we were out there looking for survivors. And by about 3 a.m., it became apparent there were none."
By daylight, the rescuers were exhausted. New York City police harbor patrolman Anthony Sgueglia was standing on the dock wearing heavy blue rubber gloves. The bodies Sgueglia found were badly bruised, with most of the limbs broken. The county medical examiner would later say many of the victims technically drowned, though they may already have been unconscious when they hit water. No one was found alive.