By Nicole Acevedo and Raúl A. Reyes -
NBC News
Cid Wilson remembers fear and disbelief.
Twenty years ago, two months after the September 11 attacks, the second deadliest plane crash in the country shook a terrified nation, but particularly affected one group: New York's growing Dominican community.
On November 12, 2001, shortly after takeoff,
American Airlines Flight 587 crashed in Queens, New York
.
All 260 people on board the plane bound for the Dominican Republic died, along with five other victims on the ground.
About
90% of the passengers were of Dominican origin
.
One of Wilson's good friends, Félix Sánchez, was on the plane.
“We have been waiting and waiting,” Wilson, 51, president and CEO of the Hispanic Association for Corporate Responsibility, told NBC News, Telemundo's sister network.
A woman wipes her eyes during a commemoration event on Nov. 12.Kathy Kmonicek / AP / AP
He recalls meeting at Sánchez's mother's apartment "to pray for any possibility that he might have missed the flight or took another, which was not unusual, because there were many different flights during the day," he said.
Sánchez was 28 years old when he died.
The promising financial advisor met Wilson after joining a group of professionals called 'Dominicans on Wall Street'.
“More than 200 lives were lost in just two and a half minutes.
It is something really incredible to understand "
“I still remember going to the Arka Lounge to celebrate life after 9/11,” said Wilson, referring to an upscale club that became a meeting place for young professionals who lived or grew up in the Washington Heights neighborhood. in Manhattan, mostly Latino and immigrant.
He recalled how the impact of the crash of Flight 587 was even more painful for Dominican Americans in New York City, after the worst terrorist attack in the history of the country.
[An explosion ripped the cockpit but the plane kept flying. All the passengers died. Sadness and doubts persist]
The National Transportation Safety Board determined that
the probable cause of the accident
was a combination of pilot error and a design flaw in the aircraft.
Once terrorism was ruled out as a motive, many Dominicans felt that the media was quick to turn the page.
"With September 11, all New Yorkers and Americans went through pain and trauma together," Ramona Hernández, director of the Institute for Dominican Studies at the City College of New York, told NBC News.
“Then the Dominican community experienced an additional catastrophe on a large scale.
It was very intense, ”he added.
“More than 200 lives were lost in just two and a half minutes
.
It is something really incredible to understand ”, he lamented.
Relatives of the victims gathered during the memorial .Seth Wenig / AP
The tragedy brought life-saving reforms in the future.
Pilot training programs were revised and
Airbus
made improvements to the design of its aircraft in an effort to make air travel safer.
The story of the partner of one of the victims who was denied survivorship benefits after the disaster because she was not married, also led, in part, to New York legalizing same-sex marriage in 2011.
No matter how many anniversaries pass, we must never forget the magnitude of this loss. "
Adriano Espaillat, Dominican Senator
Decades later, the accident still reverberates in the Washington Heights Dominican community as they remember it.
"The tragedy continues to have a lasting impact on their loved ones and our community," Adriano Espaillat, a Democrat from New York and the first Dominican-American elected to Congress, said in a statement.
"No matter how many anniversaries pass, we must never forget the magnitude of this loss
and the impact it will have forever on the lives of countless families across the country," he added.
After the tragedy, Espaillat and Wilson were actively involved in helping their community in the grieving process.
Wilson recalls that
the authorities
took weeks to identify some of the victims due
to the difficulties of working at the scene of the accident.
Espaillat was then a state assemblyman.
[Brazil mourns the death of the 26-year-old singer Marília Mendonça in a plane crash]
"I was with Espaillat when he visited the families," said Wilson.
"His office became an important information center about the accident while people waited for news of their loved ones," he explained.
Award-winning poet, writer and performer Elizabeth Acevedo even offered a fictional insight into the aftermath of the accident in her acclaimed youth book
Clap When You Land
.
The title refers to the cultural tradition of clapping once the plane touches the runway, a popular custom among Latinos like Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and others.
While researching for the play, Acevedo listened to many people who
wanted the world to remember what happened
, the Afro-Dominican author said.
I wanted to write about personal and public pain, to show how certain communities alone mourn events that perhaps deserve more attention ”,
Elizabeth Acevedo, poet, writer and performer
It is still "a gut wound"
Espaillat will present a congressional resolution on Friday "to
ensure that the history of each of the victims and their surviving relatives is not forgotten
," he said.
"We sympathize with the families of the 265 victims of that tragic day," he said.
"For them, the accident is a visceral wound and the closure remains uncertain," he said.
[At least two killed in a plane crash in a neighborhood near San Diego]
In Belle Harbor, Queens, there is a permanent memorial to the accident victims, designed by Dominican artist Freddy Rodríguez.
At that memorial, starting at 8:30 am this Friday, a ceremony was held to commemorate the anniversary.
Espaillat also attended, along with other Latino community leaders, a commemoration organized by
Hostos Community College
in the afternoon in Grand Concourse, in the Bronx.
The ceremony was open to the public.
