Flight 405: The Story of Four Passengers
THE PLAIN DEALER
Sunday, February 28, 1993
an excerpt from DEADLY DELAYS:
RED TAPE COSTS LIVES
By KEITH C. EPSTEIN
They were four strangers going about the routine business of flying – in a hurry to get home.
Like the two million people passing through airports every day, they trusted that nearly 90 years after Kitty Hawk, commercial aviation had become as safe as the government and the airlines could make it.
But this time, these four people – Kendra St. Charles, Joan Forshew, Bart Simon, and Denise Miller – were wrong.
Their trip on Flight 405 from LaGuardia Airport would change their lives forever.
Jacksonville, Fla.,
March 22, 1992, 4:47 p.m.
As Denise Miller and her father, John Stanko, head for the gate, her brother keeps the videocamera running. His baby is crying and the elderly Stanko, pushed in a wheelchair, is laughing into the camera.
Stanko, at 72, thinks this might be the last time he sees his son, a Navy seaman about to leave on another seven-year tour of duty.
Denise thinks how good it feels to be close like that, a family. She feels better about herself, too, for losing 30 pounds during workouts at the “Y” before the trip and for bringing her father to Florida.
At the gate marked “Flight 405 LaGuardia” the USAir ticket agent assigns Denise and her father seats 8A and 8B.
“Wait,” says Denise. A Euclid travel agent, she knows the layout of the Fokker F-28. “Isn’t that an emergency exit row?”
Her elderly father can’t move around easily, she explains, and in an emergency, might get in the way. She asks for seats near the bathroom in the back.
The ticket agent wonders if Joan and Frank Forshew, who are assigned to row 13, are willing to swap.
“Oh, I’d trade in 13 any day,” says Joan, who is returning to her Bath Township home after a break in Florida.
“That’s fine with me,” says Denise. “I’m not superstitious.”
LaGuardia Airport, 4:50 p.m.
Cleveland business executive Bart Simon has had a good weekend at a regional trade show, pitching his company’s hair brushes to beauty supply reps from across the country.
When the show winds down, he checks the forecast; the afternoon will turn wintry. He knows that usually means delays, so he tries to get on an earlier flight. It’s booked. He heads for LaGuardia anyway.
Once there, instead of having his usual antidote to airport boredom – a martini – he eats dinner.
Inside LaGuardia terminal,
6:30 p.m.
At last, as she approaches her 40th birthday, Kendra St. Charles feels as if she has achieved it all. A decade after her divorce, she senses she can support a daughter and be a good mother.
She has climbed quickly in her profession, selling high-fashion eyeglass frames to optometrists. What excites her is that the firm has chosen her to represent it at an optical convention.
After four days in New York, Kendra longs to get back to her home in Akron and her 16-year-old daughter. While waiting to board, she makes three calls to Tracy.
Approaching LaGuardia, 7:49 p.m.
As the flight from Jacksonville descends through the clouds, Joan Forshew can see snow in the plane’s landing lights, so different from Florida, where she and her husband, a gifted hand surgeon, attended a medical convention. The thick snow makes her uneasy.
The plane lands, and after passengers not continuing to Cleveland leave the plane, she asks if she can take a walk. A trim, athletic woman often mistaken for somebody younger than her 49 years, she is always walking.
The pilot speaks of gridlock. Pointing out the window, he says, “No rush. I don’t think we’re going anywhere.”
Gate 1, LaGuardia, 8 p.m.
Fifty-one men and women find their seats on Flight 405 as snow falls just beyond the windows.
When Kendra St. Charles finds her assigned seat, 5D, someone else is in it. So she settles into another. Eventually, she has to give that up, too. Finally, she lands in a third seat, 6B.
Gate 1, 8:40 p.m.
Just as the plane is ready to pull away from the gate, a de-icing truck gets stuck, blocking the flight. “We have an unusual situation,” the pilot announces.
Joan Forshew looks out the window, then at her watch. She thinks: We’re not even leaving and we’re supposed to be in Cleveland already.
At her side, Frank remains calm, engrossed in his paperback, “The Firm.”
Technically gifted, he is one of the first doctors in Northeastern Ohio to do microsurgery – reassembling severed limbs.
So painstaking is the work that he sometimes operates for 15 hours.
Frank, meticulous, almost fanatical about proper procedure, never rushes. As she checks her watch again, Joan wishes she had his patience.
In the row behind, Kendra St. Charles can hear a commotion. Another passenger, having pushed the flight attendant button, is kicking up a fuss.
“You are going to de-ice again, aren’t you?” other passengers hear the woman say. Her husband seems embarrassed.
It unsettles Kendra a bit, but she comforts herself with this thought: They wouldn’t let us fly if it weren’t safe.
Gate 1, 8:55 p.m
Again, the flight is delayed. Joan Forshew, looking through the window, watches a crew de-ice the plane a second time.
They are on a ladder, out in the blowing snow atop the wings, spraying back and forth.
Restless, John Stanko switches to the row just behind, leaving his daughter in row 13. As Denise watches the second de-icing, her father munches happily on some candy and jokes with the flight attendant.
In the cockpit, 9:08 p.m.
As the snow continues to fall, the plane begins to taxi. Capt. Wallace Majure and his co-pilot, John Rachuba, talk about a new de-icing station at the end of the runway in Denver, where planes awaiting takeoff can get a last-minute dousing of de-icing chemicals. Such pads are common in Europe, yet in the United States only Denver has them.
“Zip, zip, zip man, just you know, put it on the tab,” says Rachuba. “Just cruise out and take off.”
Agrees Majure: “That’s really the only sure-fire safe way to do it.”
Rachuba jokes that they should pull up behind a large jet, allowing the heat of its exhaust to “keep our wings clear for us.”
They laugh.
Near Runway 13, 9:15 p.m.
Denise Miller thinks to herself, If they don’t de-ice again, I’m getting up out of my seat. She has heard planes get de-iced every 20 minutes. Also, it’s an instinct from traveling so often.
Her father notices her anxiety. “What’s wrong, Denise?”
She shrugs her shoulders. She doesn’t want to tell him she thinks the plane shouldn’t take off.
On the runway, 9:31 p.m.
After a backup on the taxiway, it is almost Flight 405’s turn.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Rachuba announces. “We’re now No. 1 for departure and we’d like our flight attendants to please be seated.”
Denise Miller can no longer contain her anger.
“Denise,” says her father. “What’s wrong?”
She starts to unfasten her belt buckle so she can stand up to protest. She considers marching up that aisle to scream at the pilot: Don’t take off!
Meanwhile, Joan Forshew reaches across the empty seat for her husband’s hand. “Good luck,” she says. “This is going to be an experience. Here we go.”
He doesn’t reply; ever-calm, he remains glued to his paperback.
Takeoff, 9:34 p.m.
“USAir 405 runway one-three cleared for takeoff,” says the ground controller.
The engine’s whine rises as the plane rolls down the runway. From the cockpit, you can hear the wheels thumping, gauges clicking. The craft lifts slightly.
Suddenly, alarms sound, beepers go off, warning of a stall. The plane drops, dipping to the left.
“Oh my God! Oh my God!” Denise screams.
“We’re gonna crash,” Joan Forshew says, squeezing Frank’s hand and putting her head in her lap. Over in row six, Kendra St. Charles puts her head down too.
Majure swerves. Five seconds before slamming into a pump house and flipping over into Flushing Bay, he utters one last word: “God.”
Then everything goes black.
In the cockpit, still strapped in, co-pilot Rachuba regains consciousness. Water is rushing in up to his chin. The window is stuck.
When he cries out to Capt. Majure for help, he gets no answer. He sees only a mass of twisted metal.
As water rushes in, he thinks: I’ve awakened and gone to hell.
He calls out to Jesus, to God.
Somehow, Rachuba finds himself outside the plane.
In the water, 9:50 p.m.
Bart Simon can’t seem to get out of his seat, though the seat itself ripped from the fuselage. He hears water lapping at the plane, which looks as if it cracked like an egg. In a panic, he tries to press the button on his seat belt.
He thinks: I’m alive. I survived this crash, but now the plane is going to blow up and I’m not going to get out of here.
Then he remembers: It’s not a car seat belt, there’s no button. You pull it open. He jumps into the water, manages to swim, thankful that he skipped his usual martini.
Denise Miller tries swimming but, disoriented, sees only darkness. She pivots, spots the lights of the runway and the fire, begins swimming toward it. Jet fuel spreads on the water.
She looks to her right, and sees her father, his seat still attached to the bathroom wall. She can just make out the dark shape of the flight attendant, too, with whom her father had been joking moments ago.
He can’t seem to get his seat belt undone.
“Hold on, Dad,” she screams. “I’ll be there in just a minute.”
Then, when Denise feels the bottom of the bay and tries to climb slippery rocks encrusted with ice, it happens: The tail end of the plane explodes. Flames shoot into the snowy sky.
Joan Forshew is still in the wreckage. She feels something mushy at her feet. For an instant she thinks: Maybe that’s Frank. That’s it. I’ve just buried my husband.
“Hey, lady!” another passenger yells at her. “You have to get out of here!”
“I can’t move,” she pleads. “My leg’s caught.”
Somebody rips her sweater, eases her leg out, tells her to go toward a light. That’s all she seems able to focus upon: a light. She falls out of the plane into the dark icy water.
Kendra St. Charles becomes conscious. She is still strapped into seat 6B, the seat she was forced to move to. She does not know it, but the passengers in the two other seats have not survived.
She seems to be upside down in the cold water. She manages to right herself and spots the lights of the runway. A rib has punctured her lung; she has trouble breathing. But the cold, the terrible cold, seems to overwhelm the pain.
In the water, 9:55 p.m.
Denise Miller can’t feel her legs, unable to move. Fire from the tail section is spreading, lapping at the jet fuel leaking into the water – heading toward her on the rocks. She can’t get away from it. It rushes closer. It flares at her, then shoots up her body. She becomes a screaming ball of fire. She thinks: I’m going to burn to death.
A stranger runs over, at first keeping his distance.
She tries running back into the water, but stops. Then the man grabs her and rolls her on the icy rocks to extinguish the flames. It works.
When he sees she can’t stand, he runs for help.
“No!” she screams after him, looking at the flames still spreading nearby. “Please don’t leave me!”
Bart Simon crawls through the water and sees Joan Forshew on the edge of the embankment. Blood streams down her face.
She has no idea how she got there, and she can’t seem to see, but now all she can think is: I’m cold, so cold.
“Go help that woman!” somebody yells at Simon.
He thinks: What am I gonna do? Shocked, he doesn’t move at first. Then, somehow, he edges closer.
“It’s gonna be all right,” he reassures her. “Hang in there.”
Unable to walk, she is carried to an ambulance. “My husband,” she says. “Do you see my husband? I don’t think he made it.”
Kendra St. Charles sees a man when she comes to the edge of the water. “I’m so cold,” she tells him. The snow pricks her face like so many needles.
“Just lean on me,” he says. “You’ll be OK.”
She passes out.
Cleveland, shortly before 10 p.m.
Denise Miller’s husband, Peter, over at her mother’s house, is on hold with USAir, trying to find out when the plane is due at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. As he waits, a recording repeats that all lines are busy. On TV, a news flash spells out USAir Flight 405 crashes in N.Y.
“Oh my God,” cries her mother, Mary. “I can’t believe my baby is dead.”
Denise’s husband slides off his wedding ring, looks inside, where it says today, tomorrow and always, and breaks down.
He has always depended on Denise.
He asks aloud: “Now what am I going to do, Ma?”
Bellevue Hospital Center,
Manhattan, 11:45 p.m.
A psychiatrist asks Denise Miller what she’s most afraid of.
“My husband not wanting me because I’ll be disfigured.”
Her long hair is gone. It came out, on a brush, in a smelly dark clump. She has third-degree burns on her hands, arms and face. She still can’t feel her leg.
A little later, the psychiatrist returns, having telephoned Denise’s husband.
“He has a message for you,” the doctor says. “He says he loves you very much and can’t wait to be with you.”
Injuries
Joan Forshew: Four-inch gash in her head. Badly fractured pelvis. Large three-way puncture wound to the thigh. Burns on her face, ears, hands and feet. Her hair is, as she puts it, “like a frayed Brillo pad full of jet fuel.”
Kendra St. Charles: Six broken ribs, one of which punctured her right lung. Unable to breathe on her own, she is put on a respirator for four days. Her lips remain caked with blisters, and she is unable to eat. Torn ligaments in leg. Burns on face, ankles, feet, knee and hands. She has no eyebrows or eyelashes.
Bart Simon: Seven stitches on his head and he is a free man. The crash was on a Sunday. He flies out of LaGuardia the next day and is back at work Tuesday morning.
Denise Miller: Broken nose. Swallowed jet fuel. Badly fractured bones in her left leg, from the knee down, so crushed that doctors at first decide to amputate. “No way,” insists her husband when he arrives. “She’s too young. She’s only 30.”
They get a second opinion. A specialist will attempt to “transfer” a muscle from her stomach and the bone from her right leg into her left leg. It sounds miraculous. She thinks of him as “a surgeon from heaven at the hospital from hell.” ‘
But nobody knows if it’s going to work.
It is just the kind of microsurgery that distinguished Joan Forshew’s husband.
For six days, Denise Miller stays in intensive care. Since she is unable to talk, her husband points to a board with letters on it. She blinks her eyes once if he points to the letter she wants, twice meaning no.
“Am I going to die?” she spells once.
And another time: “Where’s Dad?”
Her husband doesn’t answer.
Life after the crash
In November, Bart Simon flies to the Far East. Every takeoff conjures up images of that night. In Taipei, he checks his ticket for the number of the flight to Hong Kong.
It’s 405.
He thinks: Somebody must be testing me.
“This whole thing has sobered me up,” he says. “I don’t want to, but sometimes I can’t help thinking about death and dying, about how close I was, why I survived and somebody else didn’t.”
Joan Forshew wonders what her relationship with Frank would have been if they had both survived. She has learned to slow down.
Denise Miller remains in a wheelchair. On the rare occasions when she leaves home, it is usually to see doctors or for physical therapy. She is gaining back the 30 pounds she lost before the crash. She is laid off from her job; “It’s like a slap in the face.”
The fear of going to sleep keeps her awake. “I don’t want to relive it again,” she says. “I don’t want to see his body burn again.
“I’m still working on myself. I’m not ready to mourn my Dad yet.”
A moment later, she is crying. “It was supposed to be just a little vacation.”
Kendra St. Charles’ hands are burned so badly she is unable to bend her fingers or open a door. For months she is unable to button a blouse or a jacket. It will take more months of rehabilitation before she can make a fist.
She is supposed to wear special gloves to push down the scar tissue. Her hands sometimes tingle, sometimes sting, and she feels as if they might crack open at any time. When she takes off her gloves, she can see where her watch and ring were.
After a family visit in the fall, Joan Forshew takes her daughter, Heather, to the airport, to catch a plane back to Charleston, S.C. Forshew is in for a shock.
Heather’s plane is a USAir Fokker F-28.
“Heather!” she says.
Joan decides to confront her fear. “I really want to be able to get on again,” she tells Heather.
She gets permission to board and follows Heather. Once inside, she looks back at the doorway, and is overtaken with uncontrollable shivers.
Quickly, she hugs her daughter and rushes off the plane. She runs to the observation deck. She wants to be alone, though it is foggy and raining, to see how she is doing. She seems fine.
She walks back to her car. That’s when it hits her.
“I absolutely shivered from top to bottom. I didn’t know whether I’d be able to walk. I started to shake. I got back to my car, got in, and just cried and cried.”
At Christmas, she goes to Florida again – by car.
—————-
Other stories from this series:
Deadly Delays: Bureaucracy is Killing Us – Long after wreckage is examined for clues, causes determined, and solutions urged – thousands of Americans still risk death or injury in similar accidents. (The Plain Dealer)
Ice on Jets – Recurring Risk, Tolerated for Years – Despite pinpointing causes of multiple commercial airliner crashes, Washington does nothing to require simple, proven remedies advocated for years
Flight 405: The Story of Four Passengers- Strangers on a plane, going about the routine business of flying, trusted that commercial aviation had become as safe as airlines and the government could make it. They were wrong.
Killer Trucks – Why the Slaughter Won’t Stop – Trucks with self-adjusting brakes would have fewer accidents, causing less damage and saving hundreds of lives. Yet the government dawdled in requiring them.
While Grownups Squabbled, Children Died – Battles between automakers and regulators for more than a decade stalled development of safer child seats.
Feds Shrug Off a Life-Saver for Commuter Planes – Commuter airline flights crashed repeatedly into the ground for lack of a simple device urged for years by federal safety officials. The FAA declined. Planes kept crashing.
Cessnas Crash, but Agencies Do Nothing - For decades, Cessnas chocked from a carburetor flaw known to the manufacturer and the government. Yet pilots had never heard of the problem, and the government required no fix.
Yellow Coffins – Modern school buses are among the safest means of transport. Yet when accidents occur, children are often trapped. Still, the government for years allowed preventable tragedies to recur.
Safety Board Has No Teeth – The National Transportation Safety Board is widely known for investigating accidents. What many people don’t realize is that it’s powerless – a toothless tiger.
