At the mosquito hour, when the grills are cooling and the kids seem to shout louder than ever as they cling to the last light of the day, the people of East Moriches, New York, look up from the decks of their boats and houses and see a 747 flare, break apart and go down in the sea. In a second or two, a typically dank Long Island South Shore night goes from languor to amazement to horror. Private vessels are first to rush toward the site through the Moriches Inlet, which opens to the ocean. Zodiacs from the Coast Guard station follow. Cutters come soon after.
Emergency vehicles make a long, undulating necklace of light on the roads leading to town.
The air is thick with police sirens and slow, mournful fire alarms. Everyone turns on the news. It was a fire in the plane. It was old and faulty equipment. It was the hydraulic system, the electrical system, the structure.