May 11 is an infamous date in South Florida history.
On this day 30 years ago, ValuJet flight 592 from Miami to Atlanta crashed shortly after takeoff, about 15 miles west of the airport, deep in the Everglades. Everyone on the airplane, 110 people, died.
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Monday morning, family and friends of the victims, along with first responders and former Valujet employees, gathered at the memorial site to remember.
“We do not stand here merely to recount a disaster, but to honor sacrifice. We remember the 110 pillars that stand here today,” said Miami-Dade Fire Rescue chaplain Alex Trinchet, referring to the pillars that make up the memorial.
Each pillar represents a victim. Family members read their names aloud.
Robin Steinbrenner’s father, Frederick Steinbrenner, was one of the passengers. I asked her if the passage of time has lessened the pain of the loss.
“With a lot of grief work, therapy, I’ve been able to reframe and manage the grief with finding meaning from the loss,” Steinbrenner said.
I was part of the NBC6 coverage of the crash. The immediate focus of first responders, as always, was to try and save lives. There were none to be saved. What none of us knew on that day 30 years ago was improperly stored oxygen-generating cannisters in the cargo hold ignited after takeoff, causing a catastrophic fire.
“The identification of the bodies was a horrible process,” said attorney Steven Marks. “You go away with your family and you think it’s gonna be safe and you think nothing can happen and out of the blue, a tragedy like this occurs.”
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Marks represented the families in 1996. He discovered maintenance records were falsified to cover up the cargo loading issue, which led to the first-ever criminal prosecutions in an airplane crash. One man was convicted, he fled the country and is still a fugitive.
The cannisters did not the required safety caps.
“The safety caps cost 39 cents at the time, 39 cents for all these oxygen bottles would’ve prevented the loss of these 110 people,” Marks said.
Three decades later, the victims leave a life-saving legacy of aviation reforms.
“The only reason you have smoke detectors and fire suppression in the cargo hold is because of the years of work of the family members and aviation professionals,” event organizer Gail Dunham said to applause at the ceremony.
“When I hear of a plane being saved, especially because there was a fire in the cargo hold, I know all those people were saved because of the victims of this flight,” said Marilyn Lane-Morgan, who lost her brother and sister-in-law in the crash.
In 2001, just five years after the tragedy, every commercial airliner in the United States was fitted with fire suppression equipment in its cargo holds.
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