Bijlmer Disaster 21 Years Ago

It will be the 21st time that the tree, which is called ‘the tree which saw it all’, is the meeting place of survivors and family members of the victims of the flight disaster which took place in the Bijlmermeer on October 4, 1992. The last 20 years there is always a commemoration of the flight disaster at the tree. There will be one minute silence at 6.35 pm, the official time the disaster took place. During the commemoration there will be no flights over Amsterdam Zuidoost. The whole day there will be a tent next to the tree where people can get information and reflect the impact of the disaster on their personal life. Sunday 20 October the survivors and family members of the victims are the first to see the first movie ever made about the flight disaster, by director Daniel Bruce, at the Bijlmerpark Theater. The film will be shown on the television at December 13. The tree which saw it all, with at the back the monument - wikipedia Bijlmer Disaster or Bijlmerramp At Sunday evening October 4, 1992, a Boeing 747 freight carrier of El Al, crashed on the flats Groeneveen en Klein Kruitberg in the Bijlmermeer, a district in the south east of Amsterdam with the official name of Amsterdam Zuidoost. El Al flight 1862 caused the dead of 43 people. The three crew of the airplane also died as well as a passenger, which was a local El Al employee on het way to her marriage in Tel Aviv. Since there were most probably also illegal people occupying the apartments in the flats the exact number of deaths is never exactly known. The plane came from New York and was on the way to Tel Aviv via Schiphol. Upon arrival of the plane the ‘spotters’ noticed that one of the engines was not hanging properly on the plane. During the flight three major failures were noticed by the crew. However, makeshift repairs were done while tanking the plane. Also there was an unkown cargo was loaded in the plane which was approved by the customs, but what was later discovered was not physically checked. Flight 1862 got airborne at 6.22 pm. Almost immediately the plane was in trouble and a couple of minutes later lost two engines on one side. At 6.35 pm the plane finally crashed into the two flats. Men In White Suites The situation after the crash - wikipedia In the period and even in the years after the crash it became clear to many that the plane had carried an unknown cargo. When a year later it was made public that on the day after the crash about twenty men in white suites were present at the spot of the crash, speculations about the cargo started. It was assumed that the cargo was military by origin and soon people started to connect health problems after the crash with the cargo, officially this was denied, but until today the secrecy around the cargo still makes many people believe that things were covered up.