ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 1, 1996 TAG: 9611010056
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SAO PAULO, BRAZIL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
A passenger jet clipped an apartment building and skidded through a neighborhood Thursday, spilling fuel and igniting cars and homes.
All 90 passengers and six crew members aboard TAM Regional Airlines Flight 402 were killed. At least three Americans were among the dead.
Two bodies were pulled from rubble on the ground, and the death toll was expected to rise as firefighters, civil defense workers, police and volunteers searched the debris amid blackened house frames.
The narrow, winding streets of red-tile-roofed houses were littered with pieces of twisted metal and melted plastic.
The Fokker-100 jetliner took off from Sao Paulo's Congonhas airport at 8:30 a.m. (6:30 a.m. EST) and was en route to Rio de Janeiro when it crashed only a mile from the runway, said civil defense Sgt. Carlos Santana. The weather was sunny and clear.
Joao Cardoso rushed out of his house and saw ``a river of fuel on fire flowing down the street,'' destroying dozens of parked cars and houses.
One man staggered down the street, and a neighbor, Conceicao de Souza Gomes, tried to help.
``I heard an explosion, and I saw a man with his hair on fire. I put it out with some rags,'' she said. ``He was still conscious and saying, `Help me, for the love of God.''' An ambulance took the man away.
Thirteen people were treated for shock, burns and minor injuries at a local clinic. Seven were hospitalized, one in serious condition with burns.
Rescue workers pulled charred bodies from the debris, covered them with sheets of black plastic and lined them up along a sidewalk before taking them to the city morgue.
Police asked families to bring dental records to help identify the 98 victims.
``There's no sense in [relatives] just coming'' to the morgue, ``because they won't recognize anyone,'' said Roberto Pacheco de Toledo, head of the police's Special Operations Group.
Citibank identified one of the three Americans on the flight as David Francis Tobolla, a financial director at the company. His hometown was not released. A second was identified as David Andrews, 49, of San Jose, Calif., a vice president of Behring Diagnostics Inc.-Americas, a subsidiary of the Hoescht pharmaceutical group. The third was not identified.
TAM did not know the nationalities of the passengers.
TAM Vice President Luiz Eduardo Falco said the plane's two flight data recorders were recovered and sent to the air force, which will investigate the crash. The inquiry is expected to take at least a month.
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso promised a thorough investigation and expressed sympathy for the victims' families. Sao Paulo Mayor Paulo Maluf declared three days of mourning.
``I don't know how I got out of this alive,'' said Sonia Litwin, who escaped from her burning house after a neighbor extended a plank from his roof. ``It's a miracle. God must love me.''
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP Workers examine the crash scene. The number ofby CNBconfirmed deaths was expected to rise as a search for bodies
continued. color KEYWORDS: FATALITY