Divers Find Only Small Pieces of Wreckage at ValuJet Crater
Divers in biohazard suits descended into ValuJet Flight 592’s watery crater expecting to find big chunks of the DC-9 Tuesday but discovered only more small pieces of wreckage.
“There’s no airplane left,” said Metro-Dade police detective Paul Toy. “What I found was fragmented parts. There were two large pieces of the aircraft, about the size of a 3-by-6-foot table.”
The divers entered the murky Everglades water two at a time. They were tethered together and in communication with each other and the dive platform via radio lines in their bulky rubber suits, designed to protect them from skin-irritating jet fuel and bacteria from decaying bodies.
The divers quit around midday because the muck they stirred up made it impossible to see and because no large pieces of the jet were found.
Metro Dade police spokeswoman Linda O’Brien said there are no plans to go back in: “Our diving in the pit is over. It’s been turned over” to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The search turned up no human remains. Nor did it find the cockpit recorder, which could provide important clues to why Flight 592 went down May 11, killing all 110 people aboard.
ValuJet’s blue-and-white paint was recognizable on one piece lifted from the pit, which measures 175 feet long and 60 feet wide and averages about 6 feet deep.
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