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TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — An American Airlines flight colliding with an Army helicopter in Washington, D.C. was a sheer moment of heartbreak for people across the nation and in Tampa Bay.
For David Huff, who lives in Auburndale, it brought him back to Jan. 13, 1982, when he and his partner from work were crossing the 14th Street Bridge in freezing rain.
“I looked out my window and I saw a blue streak vertical, not flying, but vertical,” he recalled.
At first, Huff didn’t understand what had happened.
“It went straight down into the Potomac River and made a circular hole,” he explained. “I mean, it didn’t float.”
“It didn’t break into pieces,” Huff continued. “It just went straight to the bottom.”
He said, at that point, traffic along the 14th Street Bridge was at a standstill, as his partner, Jerry, looked out of his window to see even more damage.
“He looked and he said, ‘Well David, part of the concrete railing is gone’,” Huff recalled. “I said, ‘Something hit it; something hit that bridge’.”
It was the plane.
“And here comes the fire wagons and the helicopter,” Huff recalled. “It was Florida Flight 90.”
Huff said he watched a woman get rescued by a helicopter and then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a Good Samaritan risking his life.
“A man jumped out of his car, went down to the bank of the Potomac River and get this, started swimming in ice water,” he recalled. “He got out there and managed to grab the arm of one person.”
Huff explained, as that man was near death, even more people stepped in to help.
“Three other people ran down to the bank, got him and the passenger,” he recalled.
Seventy-four passengers and four crew members were onboard the plane.
Only four passengers and one crew member survived, thanks to the bravery of first responders and ordinary people willing to do anything to save a life.