Mourning in Amsterdam East, El Al Cargo plane tragedy strikes Bijlmermeer.
Unspeakable tragedy, Amsterdam's dark hour after plane crash.
It was a fairly normal Sunday in October, October 4 to be exact, the day it was also animal day. It was towards evening and we were getting ready to go to Amsterdam to a Thai birth day party from a Thai friend.
The two Thai girls who just came from Thailand to have a month holiday here were already waiting in the car and soon we were on our way and drove over the high way A4 and A10 towards the center of Amsterdam, normally I take the western ring road but for this time and I don't know why I took the other way around Diemen towards Amsterdam Noord. At Diemen I noticed that a lot of cars with sirens drove by.
Ordinary cars with a siren on the roof and police cars, lots of police and after a few minutes also a fire engine. It made me nervous and tense "what's going on". Instead of driving on, I automatically followed the speeding police car to the 'Bijlmermeer' in Amsterdam East. It was a little before seven in the evening that I can remember and I didn't know at all what to expect. I had never seen so many cars with sirens and actually I felt quite burdened but the curiosity of it.
At a place where a lot of police cars stopped to run up the embankment, I decided also to park my car here and take a look behind the embankment which was about four meters high. Ot and Tae who were in the back were also tense and the three of us got out and walked up the embankment, it was already getting a bit dim and dark and still no idea what we would see.
I looked in front of me and was shocked by what I saw, there was a complete apartment building wiped out, just gone, in a kind of shock we walked a little further and the girls began to cry, there were many fireplaces and we smelled a terrible burning, I'll never forget that smell. I decided to go back, this gave me a crappy feeling and shouted to the Thai ladies that we were going back to the car. They were totally shocked by what they saw. We were now also helped by the first cordons from the police and fire department, we walked in a place where we were not supposed to walk but by my curiosity ended up, now I think 'I had never done it'.
It had become very busy with all kinds of emergency services running around nervously and disorganized and I was glad to be back in the car and so were the sad and shocked Thai girls. We went to the center of Amsterdam completely dazed, when we arrived we first had a cup of coffee in the lunchroom and the TV was on and then we found out that a plane had crashed on a flat in the Bijlmer.
What a tragedy this was and the images I saw on TV and also in real life, what a catastrophe, a disaster that never happened before in Amsterdam or the Netherlands. I was telling my story to my buddy and meanwhile we were watching horrible images on television, the girls were very upset and we decided to walk to the Thai shop where there was a special Thai birthday party from two friends from us, my Thai female friends were happy with that.
Later we heard that it was an Israeli Boeing cargo plane, an El Al 747, which crashed in the Bijlmermeer on the Klein Kruitweg and Groenveen flats, a disaster like never before. I will never forget the stench, what an air, the swept away part of the flats and the screaming people who walked around dazed. Years later they we did some health checks with us in Thailand but everything was ok.
Until today it is not exactly sure what was transported with the plane, many men in white suits were walking around there the day after and there was also a parliamentary inquiry, but the matter still stinks and the truth is still not out about the secret cargo in this Israeli plane. I have some health issues, maybe from that, but never proven, not important anymore. My thought goes out to the people who lost their loved ones there, a terrible day in the aviation history of the Netherlands.
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