NEW YORK — For a few anguished hours on Nov. 12, 2001, Americans still in shock over the 9/11 attacks watched television footage of the blazing wreckage of a jetliner that had just crashed in a Queens neighborhood, and wondered: Is it happening again?
It wasn’t. By late afternoon, authorities were saying the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 looked like an accident, not terrorism. The country breathed a sigh of relief. The horror and grief lingered longer for the loved ones of the 265 dead.
Even after a decade, sadness lives on for people like William Valentine, whose partner of 20 years, flight attendant Joe Lopes, died on the flight. “I don’t think an hour goes by when I’m not thinking of Joe in some way,” he said.
Hundreds of people gathered Saturday at a seaside memorial on New York’s Rockaway peninsula to mark the 10th anniversary of the crash, which killed everyone aboard the aircraft and five people on the ground. The wreck remains the second-deadliest aviation accident on U.S. soil.
“Ten years have gone by, but as you know all too well, every day in the wake of tragedy is a day of remembrance,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.
