The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, November 13, 2001 - 7
WAR
Continued from Page 1.
tion."
Shouting "God is great," anti-Tal-
iban troops had rolled within 12 miles
of Kabul yesterday on trucks carrying
the green, white and black Afghan
flag and displaying pictures of their
slain commander, Ahmed Shah Mas-
sood.
The anti-Taliban forces, a coalition
of factions and ethnic groups, capped
their four-day dash across the north by
overrunning western Afghanistan's
biggest city, Herat. Commanders said
they were pushing toward Kunduz, the
last Taliban-held city in the north.
Haron Amin, a Washington-based
envoy for the northern alliance, had
said earlier yesterday that the anti-Tal-
iban forces would surround Kabul,
which sits in the foothills of the Hindu
Kush mountains, to prevent the Tal-
iban from reinforcing or resupplying
their troops inside.
"We have no intention of going into
Kabul," Amin said. The United
Nations must first come up with a
plan for dividing power in
'Afghanistan after the Taliban falls, he
said.
At the United Nations, the United
States, Russia and six nations that
border Afghanistan pledged "to estab-
lish a broad-based Afghan administra-
tion on an urgent basis."
The aim is to put together a transi-
tional leadership that is broadly
acceptable, possibly including Taliban
defectors. The United Nations might
take interim control of the capital, and
Muslim and non-Muslim nations are
likely to join with Turkey in providing
peacekeepers, U.S. officials said.
Likely participants with Turkey in a
combined peacekeeping force from
Muslim and non-Muslim countries
include Indonesia, Bangladesh and
Jordan, U.S. officials said.
In a television interview, Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf, whose
government was once a strong sup-
porter of the Taliban, said a broad-
based transitional government was
essential.
"Some progress being made by
Northern Alliance toward Kabul is
dangerous to an extent, dangerous
because we are now getting informa-
tion that there are certain atrocities
being perpetrated in Mazar-e Sharif.
And that is exactly my apprehension
that we have seen a lot of atrocities, a
lot of killings between the various eth-
nic groups in Kabul after the Soviets
left, and that's why we are of the opin-
ion that Kabul should be maintained
as a de-militarized city. That is very
important," Musharraf said on The
NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
Gen. Rashid Dostum, a northern
alliance commander, said 15,000 for-
mer Taliban troops and some Taliban
commanders had crossed over to the
alliance during recent fighting.
Opposition fighters punched
through Taliban defenses about noon
yesterday after a punishing attack by
U.S. B-52 bombers. Taliban positions
began to fall one by one along the
main road into Kabul.
Bush had urged the opposition to
avoid entering the city until a broad-
based government can be organized to
replace the Taliban, which has ruled
most of Afghanistan since 1996.
However, little progress has been
" made in bringing together the dis-
parate groups in Afghanistan's frac-
tious,.multiethnic society.
And the temptation to grab the cap-
ital proved too great for the opposi-
tion, which in four days has expanded
its control from some 10 percent of
the country to nearly half.
Probe focuses on
mechanical failure
Firefighters remove smoldering pieces of American Airlines Flight 587 from a boat stored behind a house
after it crashed into a neighborhood in the New York borough of Queens yesterday morning.
Neighborhood, scarred
bySept. 11, hurt again
The Washington Post
FAR ROCKAWAY, N.Y. --- This is a spit of
land twice cursed, this neighborhood on the
watery edge of a great city.
A narrow peninsula that slicestinto theaAtlantic
Ocean, Far Rockaway is home to cops and fire-
fighters, clammers and tunnelers, union men and
women who used to surf and lifeguard and toss
footballs and tap kegs together. Some answered
the call and donned a uniform; others put on coat
and tie and sought Wall Street riches. Together,
they lost 70 of their own in the assault on the
World Trade Center.
Yesterday, their neighborhood became a funer-
al pyre as an American Airlines Airbus plowed
nose-first into their midst, flattening homes and
sending a jet-fueled fireball and clouds of nox-
ious black smoke across streets of wood frame
houses.
The toll was terrible: 260 perished aboard the
jetliner, which was bound for the Dominican
Republic, and six more people were missing on
the ground. As word of the crash spread, it
brought dread to New York's Dominican commu-
nity in Washington Heights, miles away in Upper
Manhattan -- the flight was a common route
back to their homeland.
Manhole covers belched fire, an airplane wing
severed a tree and the jet fuel sitting on the sur-
face of the water in a backyard pool caught fire,
slowly melting the blue plastic below. Blouses
and shirts snagged in tree branches, and bodies
lay charred in the streets.
CRASH
Continued from Page 1
Carty. It took off into a clear blue sky.
Three minutes later, it spiraled nose-first into the Rc
Beach section of Queens - a middle-class neighborli
miles from Manhattan, that lost scores of its people, in
firefighters and financial workers, in the Trade Center c
phe just two months ago.
Furious orange flames towered above the treetop:
plume of thick, black smoke could be seen miles away.
Investigators recovered the cockpit voice recorder,
the two "black boxes" from the twin-engine jet. Georg
of the NTSB said the quality of the recording was gc
that the co-pilot was at the controls, which was not unu.
Blakey said an initial listen to the machine found
"to indicate a problem that is not associated with an ac(
The search continued for the flight data recorder.
American Airlines said there were 251 passen
including five infants sitting on their parents' laps -a
crew members.
"I don't believe there are any survivors," Mayor I
Giuliani said.
Witnesses reported hearing an explosion and se,
engine, a large chunk of a wing and other debris falling
Tyrone Sperling, a carpenter and aspiring fire-
fighter, a 28-year-old who has buried five of his
friends these past two months, heard the sound
and came running. This was his town, where
everybody knows everybody.
He came up 130th Street, which lost three fire-
fighters at the World Trade Center.
"You see the bodies and everyone is handing
you towels and sheets and curtains to place over
them," he said. "Then we're helping the old
ladies out of the houses. Other guys are pulling
out the garden hoses and watering down every-
one's houses and yards."
Firefighter Bill Valentine was brushing his
teeth when he heard the boom. He'd lived
through one month of funerals this autumn, and
then another. He'd just started to relax.
He looked outside and saw his neighbors
screaming, and he grabbed his hat and started
running - toward the fire. This is a neighbor-
hood filled with men and women who do that
sort of thing.
Valentine helped put out two fires today, one
where a wing ignited a tree and another where
the airplane fell to the earth.
Afterward, he was sooty and dirty and pulling
off his equipment on the porch of his house and
hugging his son Billy. His wife, Ann, was talking
about the bake sales for the victims at the World
Trade Center and the 500 ribbons she made for
her neighbors and about how she was a little
weary, truth be told.
"We lost a lot of friends," she said. "This is not
a way of life. It's becoming a way of life."
Los AngelesTimes
WASHINGTON - Investigators probing yes-
terday's crash of an American Airlines jetliner
focused on catastrophic mechanical failure as a
possible cause of the incident, based on eyewit-
ness accounts and the pattern of debris scattered
over a residential New York neighborhood.
Some witnesses said they saw pieces of the
wing break away. Some heard an explosion. Oth-
ers saw one of the plane's two engines fall off.
And pieces of the tail were found floating in the
water.
While the crash occurred two months after ter-
rorists hijacked and crashed jetliners into the
World Trade Center and Pentagon, investigators
said initial information indicated that yesterday's
crash was an accident. Some 260 people died on
the plane died in the crash, and six people on the
ground were reported missing, officials said.
"It looks like there was a breakup of the air-
craft," said Jim Hall, former National Transporta-
tion Safety Board chairman. "The board will be
looking at what event would have triggered that.
... Everything is a red flag here for the moment."
Barry Schiff, a private safety consultant and
former commercial pilot, said crash investigators
normally would look first at similar incidents in
the past. In the latest crash, however, Schiff said
he could think of no obvious comparisons.
"The sequencedweare seeing in this crash I
think is unprecedented," said Schiff, a retired
TWA pilot. "I don't know of another crash where
you lose the tail section so cleanly and the verti-
cal fin and a hunk of wing comes off and the
engine comes off"
NTSB Chairwoman Marion Blakey said, "All
information we have currently is that this is an
accident." A preliminary review of the plane's
maintenance records, she added, found "nothing
indicative of a specific problem."
The European-made A300-600 Airbus was put
into service in July 1988. It had undergone a
maintenance check the day before the crash, after
a more thorough safety review on Oct. 3, an
American Airlines spokesman said. The plane's
last major overhaul was in December 1999.
The plane's General Electric CF6-80C2
engines - mounted on the underside of each
wing - are widely used on wide-bodied aircraft,
powering more than 1,000 commercial airliners,
according to a GE spokesman. A version of the
engine is used in Air Force One.
An American Airlines spokesman said one of
the engines had flown 694 hours since its last
overhaul; the other had clocked 9,788 hours since
the last overhaul. Typically, engines are over-
hauled every 10,000 hours.
Since last year, the Federal Aviation Adminis-
AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 687
Crash after takeoff
Three minutes after it departed from New #3z.vi:
Yorks John F Kennedy International Airport .
Monday morning, an Airbus A300 bound for Queens
the Dominican Republic and carrying 260 9
people crashed into a residential area of [$ yn
Queens itinesses on the round described
an exyloion, a rain of debri, followed by a
horfigns re}: Enlarged area
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the aircraft.
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Investigators s# #hat
3 reppits of arfufiotofI
dee3 SEC
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In the event of a malfunction. engines are designed to separate
from the wing itthey vibrate too much Under normal conditions,
the plane should be able to land using one engine.
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SOURCES Asoiated Puss; Nationai Trnportation Safely 8oarct Ah~&.6;
QE Arcaft Engines, Federal Avrniin Adminstr~bn
AP
tration has moved to speed up inspection of GE
CF6 engines after a Varig Boeing 767 had to
abort a take-off in Sao Paulo, Brazil, because of
engine problems. Last month, the FAA said a
new rule is needed because "an unsafe condition
has been identified that is likely to exist or devel-
op on other products of this same type design."
Experts cautioned against drawing conclusions
about the crash's cause.
"Often, eyewitnesses can be incorrect about
their initial impressions as to what they saw," said
Susan Couglin, a former vice chairwoman of the
NTSB.
Rich Roth, executive director of the CTI Con-
sulting, a Bethesda, Md., company that does avi-
ation security work, said the Airbus 300 "has got
a very good safety record. The engines on (the
crashed plane) are apparently some of the best
they've got. It was apparently a very well built
plane."
plane as it came down.
"I saw pieces falling out of the sky," said Jennifer Rivara,
who watched through a window at her home about five blocks
away. "And then I looked over to my left and I saw this huge
fireball, and the next thing I know, I hear this big rumbling
sound. I ran to the door and all I saw was big, black smoke."
One smoking engine was found intact in a parking lot at a
Texaco station two blocks from the crash site, where it had
missed the gas pumps by no more than 6 feet; neighbors ran to
the scene with garden hoses to help put out the fire. Part of the
second engine was found another block away, in Kevin McK-
eon's back yard after it crashed through his kitchen.
"The next thing we knew, the walls were blowing off," said
McKeon, who was knocked into the yard by the impact, along
with his daughter.
The vertical stabilizer - the tail fin - was pulled from
Jamaica Bay, just offshore, Giuliani said.
At least six houses were destroyed, and several others were
seriously damaged - in some cases, the siding was melted
off the homes by intense heat. Forty-one people were treated
and released for minor injuries.
Roberto Valentin, a Dominican ambassador at large, spoke
through tears when he said he believed 90 percent of the pas-
sengers were Dominican. New York City has 455,000
Dominicans.
AP PHOTO
A- large section of the tailpiece of American Airlines Flight 587 is lifted off a boat
by a crane after the Airbus A300 crashed in the Rockaway Beach section of the
Queens borough of New York yesterday. The tailpiece was recovered from Jamaica
Bay and towed to shore.
the michigan daily
REACTION
Continued from Page Z
next several months.
"I really wasn't sure what to think,"
said LSA sophomore Francis LeGasse.
"I felt bad for New York again - anoth-
er plane crash - but, no, I'm not wor-
ried about flying now."
LSA senior Jason Fountain said he
has no reservations about flying now or
in the near future. "This is just another
accident," he said. "I'm planning on
flying to Florida in December. If any-
thing, flying is safer now that it ever
has been. This could have happened at
any time."
With all airports in the New York
metropolitan area closed for hours fol-
lowing the crash, planes scheduled to
depart from Detroit Metropolitan Air-
port on their way to New York were
canceled.
Northwest Airlines spokeswoman
Kathy Peach said more than 15 flights
had been postponed by midday at
Metro, one of Northwest's primary
hubs.
Metro Airport spokesman Michael
Conway said the airport would arrange
to help anyone unable to get to their
final destination.
"If we did end up with stranded pas-
sengers, the county would be able to
provide hotel accommodations," he
said.
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MSA BLUE
Continued from Page 1
O r ic e s date's campaign" and stipulates that any "dishonest or
1/' juu iticre. ise ~ Assembl electons. by) s i ntefein wit aoherncandi
unethical acts will be treated with the utmost seriousness."
The election rules further state that when a campaign
poster is put up, it cannot be removed or covered up by
Continued from Page 1 another candidate.
when we compare the money student groups request with the The complaint claims Blue Party candidates had an
money we can actually give,"said BPC Chair Javier Restrepo. unfair advantage over other parties because party
CSC co-chair Alicia Johnson said while the BPC hands members entered buildings as early as 4:15 a.m. to
out funds to student groups for general use throughout the paper walls "when general access to the buildings is
year, the CSC funds specific community service-oriented not allowed." The complaint goes on to say that mem-
projects and events. "Instead of funding the College Democ- bers of the opposing parties were put at a disadvantage
rats for general operating expenses, we funded them for an because "the rules do not allow for the removal of
event in which they (brought) Senator Feingold to campus," these fliers ... regardless of whether the fliers were put
she said. in place in accordance with the rules."
MSA Vice President Jessica Cash said the committees The alleged violation concerning election integrity is
spend more time reviewing newer groups' applications, but one of the most serious allegations a candidate can be
the allocation process is non-discriminatory. charged with.
"There isn't any type of organization that has any advan- MSA Vice President Jessica Cash, a Blue Party
tage," she said. "The important factors in an application member, said that complaints regarding election
include clear budgeting, non-inflated expenses, impact on the integrity should only be reserved for serious infrac-
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