Trevor Collins

It's very hard to think about the picture here.

And so I'll give you the facts.

I'm not going to paint too vivid a picture of what was found that evening.

But like I said, several witnesses were airborne when they witnessed the explosion.

In fact, there was a helicopter being operated by the New York Air National Guard.

It was the HH-60 Pavehawk helicopter.

It was about eight miles or 13 kilometers away from the aircraft when it exploded.

And so they were essentially the first on scene able to arrive

after they saw the explosion.

And so as they approached, they realized that the crash was still kind of happening.

They had to retreat because debris was still falling into the water at that time.

yeah dude yeah so like i said um you know it exploded pieces immediately came down from that then the cockpit as well as like the front quarter of the plane fell off spiraling down the plane continues to fly up and so yeah you have almost stages yeah different pieces break off they have different weights to them gravity affects some of the different drop velocity a different rate and if you get there soon enough like when do you ever hear we got here too quick we need to back off because there's still pieces falling from the sky

right you just never hear about that it's always like you get there as it's happening or you get there in the aftermath of it yeah but never yeah like oh man that's what a case what a case dude and it really gives you a better idea of the timeline here like as far as like the minutiae how long it took for this crash to happen uh so to speak so they back off and ultimately rescue efforts are

required kind of an all hands on deck approach.

You have the Coast Guard, you have the police, you have the US Navy, they're all searching for any potential survivors.

And the scene was first led by the Coast Guard who brought in over 500 personnel to begin the search efforts.

And the first Coast Guard units to respond arrived in helicopters as well as cutters that were in the area.

And this is where they found the ocean absolutely alight with still-burning jet fuel.

I mean, again, 12 minutes after takeoff, this plane was essentially fully loaded for the flight, like... Right, for a long, lengthy flight, too.

Right.