On January 13, 1982, Washington D.C. emergency response was tested when two major disasters almost simultaneously hit the city in blizzard conditions.
First, at 4:01 pm, Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the frozen Potomac River only moments after taking off from Washington National Airport, colliding with the 14th Street Bridge on its fatal nosedive. The accident resulted in 78 deaths, including all but five passengers aboard the plane and an additional four on the bridge.
Then, at 4:29 pm, an Orange Line Washington Metro train derailed in a tunnel downtown, killing three more people, injuring 25 and trapping more than 1,000 commuters for hours.
Steven O’Dell was working as an Emergency Response Team (ERT) officer with the Special Operations Division of the Metropolitan Police Department at the time, and was deployed to the Air Florida crash site. He shares his story of working through the chaos, as told to A&E True Crime reporter Adam Janos.
It smelled like kerosene. There was no large fire or explosion, so when the plane broke apart a lot of the fuel floated to the surface. You could smell it. The divers were coming in and out of it while in the river, retrieving victims. The smell was permeating the environment.
We were on the south side of the Anacostia River, where it comes together with the Potomac. We were there for at least a week, the area cordoned off, keeping curious onlookers and souvenir hunters away from the scene. We had our harbor division and the U.S. Coast Guard on the water, and FAA (Federation Aviation Administration) officials and medical teams, coming and going.
This wasn’t the rescue. Any of the rescuing happened within 20 minutes of the crash. After that, it was all recovery.
In this episode of PD Stories, Officer David Stroud talks about his career with the Metropolitan Police Department, from riding in the first integrated squad cars in the ’70s to working undercover during the DC drug epidemic of the ’80s.
Getting equipment in and out was a bit of a challenge. Of course, a section of the Metro was shut down [due to the derailment]. And then there was a portion of the 14th Street Bridge shut down, too. We had a large caravan of personnel and vehicles, some with snow chains. If you came to an impasse, you went up onto the curb or the wrong way down a street—whatever you had to do to get to the scene.
We were all kind of amazed: How could two incidents like that happen at the same time? But then you let go and get busy. You do your job.
I was at the entrance area to the tent, on the riverbank. It was very cold, so freezing cold that we would sometimes rotate out and get warm. But I was there the majority of the week..
There was a contingent of Navy divers. They would go down and send up a marker—a balloon—if they found a victim. After the victims were recovered, their remains were taken to this tent, where a preliminary autopsy was done and personal items were categorized and identified.
The plane broke up when it nose-dived into the water, so a lot of the victims had upper body and facial trauma. And at that point, it was difficult to tell who the victims were. So instead, everyone was given a number.
I remember seeing the pilot: He had a wedding ring on, and that made me think about his family. The plane was totally destroyed except for a few larger sections. When they pulled the tail out, one victim was tangled in the cables and the wreckage and the pieces of the airplane.
There were children. I think everybody has a soft spot for when they see a child in harm’s way. As a professional, you show up and you take your task. As a human, as a dad, it has a personal impact.
I remember one little boy, five or six years old. He didn’t have any noticeable trauma, but he had passed. The doctors were inspecting his injuries. It was hard to witness, but when you’re on-site, you’ve got to be totally professional.
I kept thinking these were totally innocent victims. I’m not on the scene of a drug transaction or some other situation where maybe the victims were involved in some way or made bad decisions that brought about their demise. I’m not trying to minimize the impact of seeing death in the streets of D.C., but you process that differently.
These were just people. They were just on a trip to Florida.
For more stories about working as a D.C. cop in the 1980s, listen to an interview with Detective David Stroud in Episode 3 of the PD Stories podcast. For more information, visit the PD Stories page.
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