TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — In January 1982, Air Florida 90 crashed after takeoff from Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. The plane was on its way to Tampa. Seventy-four people were killed when the plane crashed into the icy waters of the Potomac River.

At that time, Joe DeCesare was the station Chief in Tampa for Air Florida.

“(The) airplane went down into the Potomac, that’s all I knew and then I was told to get your butt up there as soon as possible,” DeCesare said.

He was sent to D.C. to supervise the recovery efforts for Air Florida.

Forty-three years later, the images of that recovery are still fresh in his mind.

“It took my toll, that’s for sure,” DeCesare said.

He now knows what recovery crews in Washington are going through now.

” I mean, you pull a human being out of an airplane that’s not alive and try to bring em to the surface and try to take em to a tent and try to figure out who they are or what they are, it just,” DeCesare struggled to finish the sentence.

“I think what hurt most was the kids,” he said as he remembered the images of the bodies of the children being pulled out of the river so they could be identified.

He says he had to take a month off of work after the recovery was over, just to heal mentally.

He says it’s an event that changed his life.

“I became very safety conscious. An airplane was on the ground, I walked around, did it twice before it left to make sure it was all secured,” DeCesare said.