October 4: On This Day in World History … briefly
Hundreds of people were left homeless by the crash; the city's municipal buses were used to transport survivors to emergency shelters. Firefighters and police also were forced to deal with reports of looting in the area.
1992: Israeli plane crashes into two apartment buildings in Amsterdam
On 4 October 1992, El Al Flight 1862, a Boeing 747 cargo aircraft of the state-owned Israeli airline El Al, crashed into the Groeneveen and Klein-Kruitberg flats in the Bijlmermeer (colloquially ‘Bijlmer’) neighbourhood (part of Amsterdam-Zuidoost) of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. From the location in the Bijlmermeer, the crash is known in Dutch as the Bijlmerramp (Bijlmer disaster).
A total of 43 people were officially reported killed, including the aircraft’s three crew members, a non-revenue passenger in a jump seat, and 39 people on the ground. In addition to these fatalities, 11 people were seriously injured and 15 people received minor injuries. The exact number of people killed on the ground is disputed, as the building housed many undocumented immigrants.
There were no survivors from the crash point, only those who managed to escape from the remainder of the building. Witnesses reported seeing people jumping out of the building to escape the fire.
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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