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NTSB: Victim recovery still the priority
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July 29, 1996
Web posted at: 9:00 p.m. EDT
SMITHTOWN, New York (CNN) -- Authorities reassured the families of crash victims of TWA Flight 800 Monday, that their only priority right now is to find the victims, not to begin bringing up wreckage from the plane.
National Transportation Safety Board Vice Chairman Robert Francis, whose agency is leading the investigation into the crash, met with the victims' families Monday.
"They expressed enormous support for the divers and the work that's being done out there," he said, but as always, were concerned about the priority of victim recovery.
"I said what I have been saying -- that there is no question in anybody's mind, nor has there been, what the priority was," Francis said.
His reassurances came after an earlier interview with CNN in which he said remains of some of the crash victims might never be found.
Francis said he would be "delightfully surprised" if all the victims were recovered. (254K AIFF or WAV sound)
"We're primarily still concerned with recovering bodies, and we hope we find them in that big section of fuselage, but don't everybody think that this is going to happen from today until tomorrow because we still could have a bit of time ahead of us," Francis said.
At a news conference Monday, Joseph Lychner, whose wife and daughters died in the crash, said he was concerned with the suggestion that all victims could not be recovered.
He also questioned the real priorities of the investigation saying he thought investigators were shifting focus from retrieving bodies to finding the cause of the crash.
Lychner expressed frustration over the "rate of return" of the families' loved ones. (318K AIFF or WAV sound)
There were 230 passengers and crew aboard Flight 800 when it exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on July 17. As of Monday, 161 bodies had been retrieved from the waters off Long Island; 155 had been positively identified.
Evidence still inconclusive
A high-level federal source has told CNN that investigators have all but concluded that the plane was brought down by a bomb.
However, Francis said investigators are still looking for additional evidence before they can make that determination. He added that it may yet be some time before such a judgment is made.
Francis said no chemical residue from explosives had been found on the wreckage. He said he could not confirm reports that a third engine had been located. He also said the plane's cockpit has not yet been found.
Recovery teams hope to find more bodies in a large section of the plane's fuselage, Francis said.
NTSB Spokesman Peter Goelz told CNN that the pace of victim recovery had slowed because the victims found so far "were on the fringe of the wreckage and easily recovered."
The remainder were likely trapped in the plane's wreckage, and pieces of the plane would have to be moved to recover them, Goelz said.
A new search-and-salvage vessel, the USS Grapple, was scheduled to arrive Monday evening, to join the other Navy vessels the USS Grasp, Pirouette, Diane, and Oakhill in the mission.
Victims found, at what price?
Most people empathize with the families' desire to see all the victims retrieved as quickly as possible. Nevertheless, some have asked whether the high priority on victim retrieval won't hurt the investigation into the cause of the crash.
Francis acknowledged that as of Monday, "all of the divers continue to prioritize on victim recovery, and the only other work that is being done is work that can be done without interfering with that."
Such work includes analysis of the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, the flight's "black boxes."
The sound spectrum analysis group has so far found no acoustic evidence on the recorder that was taping general noise in the cockpit area.
Francis said that "it is doubtful that the CVR recording alone will be definitive in recording the cause of this catastrophe."
Divers were also retrieving small pieces of wreckage, which investigators have said they do towards the end of their dives if they fail to find victims.
Those pieces are adding up in the Grumman hangar, where the wreckage is being brought, but they are "still a very, very small percentage of that very big piece of equipment," he said.
"The priority that we give to the recovery of the victims is probably marginally delaying our finding out what happened to cause this catastrophe," Francis said.
"I would also say that is not a particularly high price to pay for making sure that we recover the victims for those families."
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