Re: Plane Crash in Buffalo Feb 12/09

I awoke this morning to the news of a plane crash in Clarence, NY, near Buffalo, last night. My thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of the victims of this tragedy. I was reminded of the cliche about a plane crashing into your house and struck by the fact that this does not actually happen very often. Apparently, a father was killed in the house struck by the plane, a Canadian built Dash 8 Q400 ( to be exact.) His wife and daughter miraculously escaped from the house, that is still burning now, 12 hours later. My prayers especially go to them as they witnessed the death of their husband/father.

I have just listened to Barrack Obama say almost exactly what I just wrote above, he is truly an extraordinary person and I congratulate all Americans for electing such an amazing indivdual as President.

I have watched several news channels this morning and was struck by the fact that CNN seems to be doing the best job of covering this tragedy. They are now identifying Beverly Ekcert as a victim of this crash. She is a 9/11 widow who just met with the President yesterday and was on her way to Buffalo to remember the birthday of her husband, who died in the 9/11 attacks. How ironic is that?

There was also a female pilot at the helm of this plane, I have never heard of a female pilot crashing a commercial airliner before and I wonder if she is the first (for what it's worth?) One of the Canadian news reporters suggested that she (the pilot) may have chosen to crash this way, into one house, in order to minimize the impact of the crash. This is absurd, the pilot would be doing the same thing as the pilot of the plane that landed in the Hudson River recently. She would have been trying to crash land on a glide path that avoids any houses and gives her passengers (and the crew) the best chance of survival. As a man who is a nurse I can relate to this pilot and assure everyone that she would be doing her job the way it is supposed to be done, regardless of her gender. Many of my personal heroes are women doing jobs typically done by men such as Roberta Bondar, Julie Payette, Manon Rheame, etc. What they all have in common is that they approach their jobs the same way a man would, doing it the way it should be done.

Mike Carr, RN, BScN