Bad Weather May Halt TWA Salvage Efforts

Already frustrated with the slow pace of recovery efforts, officials searching for clues in the crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 may have to shut down their salvage operation over the holiday weekend because of bad weather.

Two hurricanes and a tropical storm are active in the Atlantic Ocean, with Hurricane Edouard expected to move up the Eastern Seaboard, potentially producing waves as high as 10 feet and endangering scuba divers.

Rear Adm. Ed Kristensen, director of the Navy salvage and diving efforts, said heavy winds and storms this weekend could shut down the recovery operation.

“We’re watching it, and we’ve made contingency plans to bring all our small boats off the water,” Kristensen said. “And we’ll have to knock off the scuba diving if the water is too rough.”

He added that the storm could sweep unrecovered material and bodies farther out to sea. “The potential is there to disrupt the debris field,” he said.

Officials have warned local police departments and the Coast Guard to be on the lookout for aircraft pieces that might wash ashore from New York as far south as the Washington area.

Flight 800, en route to Paris, exploded July 17 shortly after takeoff from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. All 230 passengers and crew aboard were killed.

Investigators, meanwhile, are broadening their examination of debris from the center of the plane, where they believe the initial explosion occurred. They plan to create a mock-up of the roof area of the plane’s double-decker passenger area above the center area.

“There’s interest in looking at the fire damage in that area too,” said Robert Francis, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

The New York Times reported in its editions today that federal investigators have created a computer simulation of the final moments of Flight 800, which indicates that almost everything in the first spray of metal, luggage and other materials blown from the airplane came from an area on the right side of the jet above and ahead of the wing.

Unnamed investigators said that several fist-sized holes had been punched through the backs of two seats on the right side of Row 23, holes that might indicate the site of the initial blast that felled the plane, the newspaper said.

To date, 211 bodies have been recovered, two of which remain unidentified. The remaining 19 have yet to be found.