I wrote this on September 2, 2013.
Flight Swissair 111 crashed off Peggy's Cove 15 years ago tonight. At the time, I was at a house party and my friend's father called to say he heard reports of a plane in trouble on his police scanner. We turned the TV on and waited for news. When the reports came in, the party was forgotten as we watched through the night and into morning.
Back then, I worked as a cook in a seafood restaurant on the Halifax waterfront. I remember the first waiter who came into the kitchen with tears in his eyes. Everyone at his table of six was crying. They were family members of the victims. We had a lot of families in those first few days after the crash. The dining room was scattered with tables of grieving people. They tipped well, but no one wanted the money. The kitchen staff, who ate at work, stopped eating fish because it came from St. Margaret's Bay.
We talked about the crash constantly at work, repeating news stories we had seen on TV or read in the newspapers. We had to talk to one another for news. Cell phones were not smart and even for folks with Internet access, it still wasn't terribly useful.
As the days went on, the search and recovery effort continued and the families dwindled. Things appeared to be getting back to normal at work a week and a half after the crash. Expecting a quiet Sunday night, we were blindsided by all the out-of-town media wanting to make the most of their last night on expense accounts before returning home. They ate and drank and ate and drank; consuming every lobster in the tank and every last piece of fish. The same fish we wouldn't eat. Perhaps they wanted some relief from the horror they spent their days covering, but it felt obscene after all the families we'd fed.
Eventually 98 per cent of the plane was recovered and much of the cargo. All 229 victims were identified. Only one was visually identifiable. Most news coverage doesn't say it, but it was an infant who was too small to be belted in. The remains that couldn't be identified were buried at a memorial in Bayswater. Another monument was erected just outside Peggy's Cove.
I'm sure I've forgotten half of everything that has happened in the last 15 years, but the crash and the days after stick with me.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/09/12/f-swissair-crash.html
Flight Swissair 111 crashed off Peggy's Cove 15 years ago tonight. At the time, I was at a house party and my friend's father called to say he heard reports of a plane in trouble on his police scanner. We turned the TV on and waited for news. When the reports came in, the party was forgotten as we watched through the night and into morning.
Back then, I worked as a cook in a seafood restaurant on the Halifax waterfront. I remember the first waiter who came into the kitchen with tears in his eyes. Everyone at his table of six was crying. They were family members of the victims. We had a lot of families in those first few days after the crash. The dining room was scattered with tables of grieving people. They tipped well, but no one wanted the money. The kitchen staff, who ate at work, stopped eating fish because it came from St. Margaret's Bay.
We talked about the crash constantly at work, repeating news stories we had seen on TV or read in the newspapers. We had to talk to one another for news. Cell phones were not smart and even for folks with Internet access, it still wasn't terribly useful.
As the days went on, the search and recovery effort continued and the families dwindled. Things appeared to be getting back to normal at work a week and a half after the crash. Expecting a quiet Sunday night, we were blindsided by all the out-of-town media wanting to make the most of their last night on expense accounts before returning home. They ate and drank and ate and drank; consuming every lobster in the tank and every last piece of fish. The same fish we wouldn't eat. Perhaps they wanted some relief from the horror they spent their days covering, but it felt obscene after all the families we'd fed.
Eventually 98 per cent of the plane was recovered and much of the cargo. All 229 victims were identified. Only one was visually identifiable. Most news coverage doesn't say it, but it was an infant who was too small to be belted in. The remains that couldn't be identified were buried at a memorial in Bayswater. Another monument was erected just outside Peggy's Cove.
I'm sure I've forgotten half of everything that has happened in the last 15 years, but the crash and the days after stick with me.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/09/12/f-swissair-crash.html
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