'Never Forget:' Flight 800 News Broke At Carnival, Ex-Chief Says

JAMESPORT, NY — A beloved tradition is back, beginning on Tuesday, as the annual Jamesport Fire Department Carnival and Bazaar unfolds at the George Young Community Center, located at 446 South Jamesport Avenue.

But this year's carnival is especially meaningful, said the Jamesport Fire Department's ex-Chief Howard Waldman, who has served the department for more than 40 years. Because 25 years ago, on July 17, 1996, when TWA's Flight 800 fell from the sky into the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of East Moriches, reporters covering the carnival announced the news live from the event, he said.

The crash left 230 lives lost, including 15 students from Pennsylvania.

It was a Wednesday night, Waldman said. "Twenty-five years ago this Wednesday night, at our Jamesport Fire Department Parade, with all the South Fork Fire Departments attending, sometime after 9 p.m., all their pagers went off with news of a possible plane crash," he said.

The radio station WLNG had a bus with reporters in Jamesport covering the parade, Waldman said.

"They broke onto the air, and the late Paul Sidney, president and general manager of WLNG, announced it to the world," Waldman said. "Then CNN, which monitors radio stations, must have picked it up and started covering the crash."

Soon, the news rocked the world as the painful search of the wreckage began, lasting for months and leaving a grieving community shattered by the tragedy.

Waldman added: "All the South Fork-based fire departments left Jamesport with screaming sirens. The state trooper who was next to me was called on his walkie-talkie. I'll never forget that night."

Reflecting on the night that feels a heartbeat away, even 25 years later, Waldman said: "The worst air disaster ever in the United States was announced to the world almost immediately from the Jamesport carnival. A day that will live in infamy."

Flight 800 was a Boeing 747-131 plane that departed from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and was headed to Rome, with a stop in Paris.

Luz Palaez, who now lives in Florida, was living in Moriches at the time of the crash. Her daughter and son-in-law Eric and Virginia Holst, who lived in Manorville, died in the crash.

"It's been 25 years, and it is still very difficult to get used to the idea that my daughter is not here anymore," Palaez told Patch.

Her daughter and son-in-law, Palaez said, were headed to Paris for Eric's brother's wedding, and to enjoy a vacation.

Remembering her daughter, Palaez's voice filled with tears. "Virginia was my angel," she said.

Although the cause of the crash was officially listed as fuel vapors exploding in a fuel tank, for years, questions and conspiracy theories have lingered.

Newsman Drew Scott, who worked for Channel 55 and later, News 12, spent months covering the story and subsequent lengthy investigation. Today, 25 years later, he remains forever changed by what he witnessed.

"It was agonizing to see the recovery efforts and interview the grieving families," Scott said.

Scott said he interviewed James Kallstrom, the lead on the FBI investigation into the crash, as well as National Transportation Safety Board Chairman James Hall. He made at least four trips to Washington, DC, and Baltimore to cover the hearings and investigation, Scott said.

Asked what he remembers most about July 17, 1996, Scott said: "The kids from Pennsylvania — and the few seconds it took, to tumble into the ocean."

Scott also spent time at a reconstructed Flight 800.

The reconstruction, he said, took place at "a huge former Grumman hangar in Calverton. It was chilling to see it put back together with a gaping hole in the left side. I still get chills thinking about it."

ABC has also aired a docuseries on the crash victims' families.