Unthinkable_ Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why - Amanda Ripley [101]
Olian is bald now, with a white beard and wire-rimmed glasses that make him look like a man who likes to read classics and collect wine. But he actually spends most of the day outside doing hard physical work. He runs his own small tree service, a profession he took up in 2002 when he was laid off from his government sheet-metal job after twenty-eight years of service. He often works alone, climbing up into the treetops like an acrobat and cutting down unwanted branches. When we meet at his small red-brick home in Arlington, he is wearing a denim shirt, tan jeans, and the kind of earth-tone sneakers you see on people at technology start-ups in Seattle. His long arms hang languorously by his sides, like a basketball player’s.
We sit in the living room, next to the woodstove, which Olian periodically feeds with wood from a symmetrically stacked pile of logs. As we talk, he gently pets Sandy, a miniature poodle and one of two small dogs that he and his wife dote over. For the first half hour or so, Olian doesn’t meet my gaze very often. He stares down at the dog as he describes that strange, long-ago day on the Potomac. When Pumpkin, the other dog, comes over to lick Sandy’s nose, Olian interrupts his story to fuss over them. “Oh, look, they’re kissing!” he says. As he relaxes, Olian looks up more often. Eventually, the dogs move on to other things.
The Hero On Board
Air Florida Flight 90 had taken off that morning with ice and snow on its wings. The Boeing 737, en route to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, had been delayed almost two hours while snow was swept off the runways at D.C.’s National Airport. Shortly before 3:00 P.M., the airport had reopened. The flight crew had deiced Flight 90, but not as thoroughly as they should have. When the plane took off, it strained and stretched to reach up to the sky, but the armor of ice weighed it down.
Joe Stiley knew the plane was going to crash before it even left the runway. He traveled constantly for his job as an executive at GTE. He flew in 737s out of National Airport about once a week. Maybe because Stiley had also been a pilot himself, he noticed things that most people didn’t. For one thing, the crew hadn’t finished deicing the plane. He could see them through his window. And when the plane finally took off, he could tell it was going far too slowly. He got into the brace position and told his secretary, Patricia “Nikki” Felch, to do the same thing. “What I said was, ‘Nikki, we’re in deep shit. Do what I do.’ I put my head right up next to my rear end.”
Stiley looked up once more before the plane crashed. He saw through the window that the plane’s left wing was slanted downward. He put his head back between his legs. That day, January 13, was his son’s birthday. Before the plane slammed into the bridge, Stiley apologized to God for leaving on a business trip on that day. He ached to think that his son would forever remember his birthday as the anniversary of his father’s death.
Just seconds after takeoff, less than half a mile from the airport, Flight 90 hit the Fourteenth Street Bridge like a wrecking ball, destroying seven cars, killing four people, and tearing away a section of the bridge wall. The plane broke into a dozen pieces on impact.
When the plane hit the bridge, Stiley remembers, it felt a lot like being rear-ended hard in a car. The impact rattled him down to his bones. Hitting the water, though, was much worse. “That impact was unbelievable.” He could feel himself blacking out. “I didn’t expect to wake up.”
When Stiley came to, he was sitting upright in his seat with water up to his neck. Felch was still next to him. He could hear other people moaning around him. Then the plane started