A few nights ago I was going through old work photos. I came across the photos from the crash of Flight 3407 near Buffalo. Just looking at the photos took me right back to February 12, 2009. I remember every detail of that night.
I was on call that day and the phone rang around 10:45pm after a report of a car into a creek in Churchville. I remember getting out of bed debating what clothes to throw on. I thought to myself— grab anything; it doesn't matter because I will be home in an hour or so. As I left my house it started snowing hard. I got to Churchville and started searching for the car in the creek. Just then my phone rang. It was the newsroom. "Hey Will, its Kat (our 11pm producer).” “We have an airplane crash near Buffalo we need you to come back and get Sean Carroll and go." From this moment on I remember EVERYTHING I saw, said and heard for next 24 hours.
I picked up Sean and we hit the thruway. We had our radio tuned to CNN where they had live reports from the crash site. This is when we both realized how big this was. By now the snow was coming down extremely hard; roads were very slick. We are both normally very talkative in the car. This trip was very quiet! As we rolled down Main St in Clarence we could see the glow of the fire and the smell of jet fuel burning. I will never forget those 3 minutes. We made our way to the media staging area where hundreds of members of the media had gathered. I remember looking around at all their faces and seeing blank looks. This is the first and only time I have ever been in a media staging area where you could hear a pin drop.
We are now coming up on 3 years since the crash. I can still remember it like it was 3 days ago. I think about that day often. I think of the looks on the faces of town officials as well as the emergency crews. You could see the shock and sadness on their faces. I think many of them were thinking they were going to wake up soon because this was just a horrible nightmare. One thing I haven't done for 3 years is learn the names of the people who lost their lives that day. Of course I’ve heard names because we have covered many gatherings of family members over last 3 years. But I never wanted to learn the names and stories of these people.
My thought was I was having a hard enough time dealing with this without knowing names and personal stories. So a few nights ago I started looking up stories on YouTube. In the last few days I have learned a lot about the crew and passengers. I have also learned a lot about the families and how many of them have made it their life goal to make air travel safer. I learned that the 49 onboard and the 1 person that died on the ground have names and stories. I know that this will be a day that I will always think about. But now when I think of it I will think about those 50 people who lost their lives that night and how they changed air travel. So maybe take a look at some of the names and faces, because it is up to us not to forget Flight 3407!
Will Morgan, Photojournalist
