THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 30, 1996 TAG: 9607300002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 50 lines
Are we turning into a culture of complaint, in the phrase of critic Robert Hughes?
Case in point is the unrealistic expectations coming from some of the distraught families of the victims of TWA Flight 800, which exploded and crashed into the Atlantic almost two weeks ago killing everyone on board.
That crash was undoubtedly hideous. In the first 24 hours after the crash TWA came under extreme - and mostly justified - criticism for its lethargic response to the families of the victims. Gov. George Pataki of New York and Mayor Rudolph Guiliani of New York City were quick to chastise the airline.
But in the days and weeks following the crash, it has been the bereaved themselves doing the complaining: The bodies were not being brought up fast enough, the medical examiner was performing full autopsies on the bodies and taking too long, they were learning information about the crash from the media instead of getting private briefings.
Their behavior in the wake of this awful event unfortunately diminishes some of the public's sympathy for them.
Let's recognize this salvage operation for what it is: superhuman.
This is not the same as picking up pieces of a terrible traffic wreck off the highway. This 747 blew apart more than two miles in the air; it crashed into the ocean at several hundred miles an hour, and pieces of the wreck sunk 150 feet to the ocean floor, spread out over several miles.
Divers are repeatedly risking their own lives in the effort to bring up bodies and pieces of the jet. They are scouring two square miles of ocean floor in dark, dangerous water, at depths which are unsafe, to recover corpses from the bottom of the ocean.
The fact that 100 bodies were recovered in the first few days was remarkable. That they located and brought up the so-called black boxes, which were not emitting sounds as they were supposed to, is unbelievable.
A less-caring government might have declared that the remaining bodies would stay in their watery grave and that all future salvage work would be aimed only at bringing up evidence of what caused the crash. But the National Transportation Safety Board has declared that its first priority is bodies.
These family members have suffered a horrible loss. The country, including President Clinton who visited them, joins them in mourning.
But the Coast Guard, Navy, NTSB and the FBI are going to extraordinary lengths to find the explanation for the final doomed flight of that New York-to-Paris bound aircraft - and to recover the remains of passengers.
Despite pressure from grief-stricken family members desperate for some kind of closure, the government should continue to handle the investigation slowly and deliberately, without putting divers and other workers at undue risk. by CNB