2 Die as Helicopter Crashes Near Lincoln Tunnel
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A small, low-flying helicopter heading toward Manhattan with a flying instructor and his student snagged a power line, cartwheeled in midair and crashed in flames on a busy elevated-highway approach to the Lincoln Tunnel in New Jersey yesterday, killing the two people on board. No one on the ground was killed or injured, but the crash set off a chain of fires that engulfed scores of cars in a commuters’ parking lot under the highway, a shadowland where people returned after the day’s work to find singed skeletons where they had left shiny roadsters and getabouts. Other effects also rippled outward: power failures in 10 New Jersey communities and an interstate traffic jam that affected tens of thousands. The cause of the crash was not immediately determined, but officials said the helicopter, a two-seat Robinson-22 that had taken off from Teterboro Airport six miles to the northeast, was only about 150 feet in the air when its rotor hit the power line and it spun down to a fiery death. Terrified witnesses — motorists, children in a nearby school, workers in an industrial area laced with cloverleaf roads and rail and power lines — told of explosions and fireballs as the chopper came down, skipped and broke apart on Interstate 495 a mile west of the Lincoln Tunnel in North Bergen at 12:50 P.M. “It hit the wire and just came tumbling down right in front of my car,” said Frank DePinto, 20. “I just slammed on the brakes so I wouldn’t hit it. It just kept burning. Vehicles were zig-zagging all over the place, trying to get out of the way.” More : query.nytimes.com |