Victims’ Families Pay Emotional Visit to Jet Crash Site

MIAMI —  It was a sad but, they believed, necessary journey.

Seeking comfort and facts, the families of the victims of ValuJet Flight 592 traveled Wednesday to the isolated spot in the Everglades where the plane bearing their loved ones had plunged into the murky waters on Saturday.

They laid a wreath of pink-and-white carnations, heard a brief prayer and stood silently, remembering a mother or brother they had lost and trying to imagine the big plane suddenly disappearing into the vast swamp.

“It is very difficult,” said Adezza Lameda of Caracas, Venezuela, whose brother, Rafael, died in the crash. “But I need to see for myself where it happened. There is no body to recover. There is nothing, really. But he is my brother, and I can put flowers down for him. It is like a funeral.”

Rescuers working in the dense swamp have recovered some body parts, but said they don’t expect to find any intact bodies.

Since Sunday, when they began gathering at the Crown Sterling Suites Hotel near the airport to await the recovery of the bodies, the estimated 50 families had clamored for more information about the crash and for a chance to view the remote site for themselves.

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Even so, they were able to get only as far as the command center, at the edge of a dense sea of saw grass, within about 300 yards of the spot where the plane crashed. No reporters were allowed to accompany them.

The relatives boarded their four buses somberly, some covering their faces to shield them from photographers. One man carried a giant teddy bear. A young woman stood weeping on the hotel balcony, waving and shouting, “Dad! Dad!” at a gray-haired man who was slowly boarding the bus, as if she hated to see him leave her sight. She then collapsed against a friend.

“There’s anger, of course, and sorrow,” said Evalina Bestman, a psychologist who has been assisting the families. “ . . . The family members feel they are not getting enough information. They need to know, and this will help them.”

Still, she said, not all the relatives wished to view the site; they just did not like being told by authorities in previous days that they could not go. “They cannot deal with the pain,” she said. “In my opinion, it is too difficult for them to confront the reality of the death. Once they were given the option of going, that was enough.”

But for most, the pilgrimage gave a focus to days that have become endless and disorienting in their grief. “Every minute is like a million for them,” said the Rev. Gabriel Ghanoum, a pastoral counselor who has been with the families around the clock.

Evelyn Wilson, whose brother-in-law, Richard Hazen, was the first officer on the flight, said that even if she saw nothing but grass and water, it would help her to understand the enormous task faced by the rescuers and would bring home the finality of Hazen’s death.

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“For one thing, this will help me to understand what is involved in finding the bodies,” she said. “I’m from Texas, where it’s dry and hilly. This is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.”

But the Shotwell family decided to forego the journey. Theresa and Willie Shotwell, of Westpoint, Miss., lost their two sons, Jarvis and Al Shotwell, in the crash, and did not see the pilgrimage as a needed farewell.

“My sister and brother-in-law are never for saying goodbye,” said Alex Yeats, Theresa Shotwell’s brother. “They’ll always have their sons in their hearts.”