It’s been 24 years since Swissair Flight 111 crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia, killing more than 200 people and forever changing the lives of those who responded to the disaster.
It was a cloudy evening on Sept. 2, 1998, when 229 people boarded Swissair Flight 111 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York for a flight heading to Geneva, Switzerland.
The flight took off at 9:18 p.m. AT, and just over an hour later, at 10:31 p.m., it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Halifax Stanfield International Airport at the entrance to St. Margarets Bay, leaving no survivors.
Of the 229 people who died, 14 were crew and the rest were passengers, most of whom came from the U.S., France, or Switzerland.
Approximately 2,800 people were involved in the recovery and some 200 divers ventured 55 metres below the ocean surface in search of human remains and parts of the aircraft.
The disaster, which began with an electrical fire that spread through the cockpit and caused a catastrophic failure, eventually led to improved safety measures on planes, including certain flammable materials no longer being used on aircraft.
The crash site was about eight kilometres from the shore, close to Peggy’s Cove. Nearby, located within the Peggy’s Cove Preservation Area at the end of a short walking trail, there’s a monument where people can pay their respects.
There’s another memorial site in Bayswater, a nearby fishing village which was a site of the recovery operation in the aftermath of the crash, where the remains of passengers and crew were buried.
Dan Bedell, currently the Atlantic communications director for the Canadian Red Cross, was helping to respond to media requests for the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Halifax at the time of the crash.
He, along with other members of the communication team spent a “hectic” night answering calls and trying to get answers for media outlets across the world.
“You couldn’t answer phone calls quickly enough. You’d hang up one call, and immediately there’d be another person on the phone,” Bedell said. “It just went on for hours and hours that night.”
At first, there was some optimism that there would be survivors. The crash happened close to shore, first responders arrived at the scene quickly, and water in the Atlantic ocean tends to be at its warmest point in September.
“Initially, it was very much a rescue effort. We fully expected, hoped, to find survivors,” Bedell said. “But it would be hours before … it became pretty clear that there weren’t going to be any survivors.”
During that long night, before they knew the full scope of the tragedy, calls also began coming in from family members of the people on the flight.
Bedell vividly remembers one phone call from a man looking for his daughter.
“He says, ‘I’m just wondering if there’s any way … if my little girl could still be alive,'” he said.
“It was very difficult explaining to this man … we had not found any survivors at that point, but we were still actively searching because we were still hopeful that survivors would be found.”
Bedell said the rescue and communications efforts were massive, with many agencies, levels of government, and community members involved.
He said his thoughts remain with the families of those who died, as well as the people who responded to the tragedy.
“It was extremely traumatic for especially the fishermen, the Navy personnel, the Coast Guard personnel, that were out there, hoping to find survivors and only recovering human remains,” he said.
“Some of them saw some pretty horrific things that night, and that stays with them forever.”
— with files from Andrew Russell and The Canadian Press