Fight 255 at Detroit Metropolitan Airport

This morning I was reading Alice's Underground Adventures about Flight 90 that landed in Hudson Bay and how modest and professional the captain was. It was nice to have something good in the news for once.

I did comment on her post about how it made me think of a hot August evening 1n 1987 when I had taken my husband to work earlier in the evening. I was returning from that trip when I smelled a horrible thick smell and didn't know what it was from. I heard and saw fire trucks and police cars racing by us. My oldest daughter was only three and the younger one was just an infant in her car seat. I told Danielle that when we got to Middlebelt Road we would be able to see what was going on. Well, when we got further up the road I saw that the traffic on the opposite side of I-94 was completely stopped and men were directing traffic wearing shorts and t-shirts and carrying flashlights. This was really odd.

Further down the road I saw that there was a huge fire on the railroad overpass off to our right. I looked down onto Middlebelt Road and saw hundreds of small fires burning. The trees were on fire near the road. A large chunk of the fuselage was on fire just to the side of the freeway. Police were frantically directing us to keep on moving. I had no idea at what I was looking at. I thought a train had crashed. I heard no reports of a plane crash on the radio. I was just listening to music. This was way before cell phones. I had no idea that my husband was frantically trying to get ahold of me. He had heard about the plane crash and knew I was headed right for that area.

It sounds stupid now that I was driving right past an airport and looked at a plane crash and didn't even know what I was looking at. Now my cell phone would be ringing and I would have been talking to my husband the entire way home. Not so that night. Danielle and I just talked all the way home and decided that when we got home we would turn on the television and find out what was really going on.

When I walked in the door at home, of course the phone was ringing. My husband thought that maybe I was the one that got hit by the fusilage and was injured. I did see that fire and had no idea what I was seeing. The news reports said that no one could get near the crash. I had just been there.

Danielle being only three was very concerned about the little girl that survived Flight 255. The sole survivor was four years old. She was in the hospital for a long time and when released went to live in Alabama with her aunt and uncle. You don't hear about her anymore. We sent her a get well card. Danielle helped pick it out. She saw the pictures on the newspapers for the next few days. People thought it was strange that a three year old was reading the papers but she had seen way too much that night and so did I.