October 11, 2006

Now there's something I never wanted to see on a CNN crawl again. Ever.

From the NYT:

An aircraft crashed into a building in New York City’s Upper East Side this afternoon, igniting several apartments of the residential high rise before pieces of the building crashed onto the ground, witnesses and officials said.

A Fire Department spokeswoman, Emily Rahimi, told The Associated Press that the aircraft struck the 20th floor of the building, 524 E. 72nd St., near York Avenue. However, television reports said the aircraft hit closer to the 40th floor.

There are no reports of any injuries so far, and the authorities have not said whether the aircraft was a small airplane or a helicopter.

Television views of the fire showed flames shooting out of four windows and smoke that streamed up into the sky, visible for miles. The building is a 50-story condominium that was built in 1986, The A.P. said, and has 183 apartments.

CNN is reporting one fatality. They've got an eyewitness on a cellphone saying that it was in fact a small plane, not a helicopter, and that it made a "huge fireball" when it hit the high rise.

Sadly, "huge," as an adjective applied to fireballs erupting from high-rise buildings, is relative these days. When I was pedaling along 2nd Avenue on September 11, this is what I was hoping the driver of the van meant when he leaned out of his window at an intersection and told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.

Hopefully, this isn't a repeat of the 2002 incident in which wanna-be teen terrorist Charles Bishop stole a plane and crashed it into a Florida building for Osama.

Homeland Security is already calling it a "terrible accident." As if they've already identified the pilot and searched his house for Islamofascist pamphlets and George Bush dartboards.

UPDATE:
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Then again, maybe it was just a Yankee pitcher running out of fuel.

Still doesn't rule out the George Bush dartboard, though. Lots of people have those.