Forty years ago today a passenger jet crashed into the Potomac river
due to heavy snow, killing almost everyone on board. It also killed
people on the 14th Street Bridge on its way down.
Also, a Metro train had a fatal accident when its driver somehow
managed to get the front of the train on one set of tracks and the
rear of the train on another, diverging, set of tracks, forcing the
middle of the train into the concrete divider.
Those two totally unrelated events were the two greatest mass casualty
incidents in DC in the past 99.5 years. And they happened, not just
on the same day, but in the same half hour.
A larger DC disaster happened just under a century ago. Like the
plane crash, and unlike the Metro crash, it was snow related. A
theater roof collapsed.
Before someone brings up 9/11, note that the Pentagon isn't in DC.
Speaking of 9/11, in Monday's Washington Post I read, about the recent
Bronx apartment fire, "The blaze was the deadliest in New York City
since the 1990 Happy Land social club disaster, which left 87 dead."
I emailed them a correction.
--
Keith F. Lynch -
http://keithlynch.net/
Please see
http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.