Indian Lake

Plane shot down?

Indian Lake

Some websites report the distance of Indian Lake as six miles.

6+ miles is the driving distance you get if you use Google Maps, Mapquest or other map services. As the crow flies, it is 1.5 miles to Indian Lake from the crash site.

What debris was found?

The debris found in New Baltimore consisted of very light materials, such as paper, nylon, thin nylon, things that would, if in the air with the wind, would easily blow. — "FBI Briefs the Media on the Crash in Pennsylvania", CNN, September 13, 2001

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (September 14, 2001):

Workers at Indian Lake Marina said that they saw a cloud of confetti-like debris descend on the lake and nearby farms minutes after hearing the explosion that signaled the crash.

Those discoveries, which ranged from a five-inch bone fragment to an endorsed paycheck as much as eight miles downwind of the crash site, sent investigators on a hunt across a countryside that is mostly farms and woodlands. Bits of debris probably blew even farther, Szupinka said.

Carol Delasko, who works at the marina, said she saw a light cloud that stretched several hundred feet across rising about 200 feet into the air moments after the crash.

"It was white," said Theresa Weyant, borough secretary for the nearby resort community of Indian Lake, "so you looked up and it and you saw shiny stuff floating in the sky ... sparkly, shiny stuff, like confetti."

When it got to Terry Lowery's 65-acre farm, about three-quarters of a mile away, "it just looked like it was raining down," Lowery said.

"Paper, insulation and mail -- I picked a bunch up," he said.

Yesterday, a state police helicopter circled overhead as much as five miles downwind of the crash site. Its mission: to find debris -- mostly paper, postage stamp-size pieces of rubberized material and strands of charred insulation.

On Wednesday morning, marina Service Manager John Fleegle found what he figured was a bone, washed up on one of the marina's concrete boat launches.

"It was maybe five inches long. It put me in mind of maybe a rib bone," Fleegle said. "I called the state police. They contacted the FBI, and they picked it up."

Six miles to the southeast, at New Baltimore, a town of 630 people, Andy Stoe was in his yard Wednesday night when he found two scraps of paper -- one an endorsed check for $698, made out to a San Jose, Calif. man who was not on the passenger list. The other paper was a financial statement, singed around the edges.

In Indian Lake, another crumpled financial statement lay amid thumbnail-size pieces of fabric and charred plastic, scattered across back yards.

On the Lowery farm, it rained financial statements -- enough that Lowery and wife Gerry had a handful in the three one-gallon plastic bags of debris they turned over to investigators.

"They said they found unopened mail," Gerry Lowery said of the mix of state police and FBI searchers who walked almost shoulder-to-shoulder through their fields all day Wednesday and yesterday. "They found a picture, a snapshot of a baby. That just caused goose bumps for me."

Szupinka said that lighter, smaller debris probably shot into the air on the heat of a fireball that witnesses said shot several hundred feet into the air after the jetliner crashed. Then, it probably rode a wind that was blowing southeast at about 9 mph, Crowley said.

"According to the NTSB, not only is that possible ... it is probable that this stuff is debris from this crash," he said. He and Szupinka said additional debris may be submerged in the lake, as well as in a drainage pond near the crash crater, and may have to be retrieved later by divers."

Nearby planes?

There were two other planes flying nearby in the area, at the time that United Airlines Flight 93 crashed.

Fairchild Falcon 20

A Fairchild Falcon 20 business jet, owned by VF Corp. of Greensboro, N.C., was spotted as it headed to the Johnstown-Cambria airport. The plane in descent to land at the airport and was at 3000 to 4000 ft altitude at the time.^[1] Its pilot, Yates Gladwell, was directed to help locate the crash site.^[2] This is the white plane that some people spotted after Flight 93 crashed. It was simply there to confirm the crash and get the coordinates of the crash site.

Other planes in the area

C-130

A C-130 military cargo plane was also within 25 miles of the passenger jet when it crashed, but not diverted to the crash scene.^[2]

Cessna

"WTAE-TV reported that the mystery pilot in the white plane may have been an area farmer. James K. Will, a Berlin, Pa., farmer who pilots a white Cessna with red stripes and who has an airstrip near his farm, told Team 4 reporter Paul Van Osdol that he circled the scene about 45 minutes after the crash. Will said he had just returned from Altoona and, when he'd heard about the crash, flew to the site to take photos of the wreckage. Pennsylvania State Police said that his plane may have been the one that many saw. Will's flight was intercepted by a state police helicopter and was escorted to the Johnstown-area airport. His plane was searched and he was released."^[3]

References