Memorial marks 20th anniversary of TWA Flight 800 crash

Family members of the 230 victims of the TWA Flight 800 crash gathered with those who tried to rescue their loved ones on a Long Island beach to mark the 20th anniversary of the disaster.

“It’s been a difficult 20 years,” John Seaman, head of the TWA Flight 800 Families Association, told several hundred people gathered Sunday for an hour-long service at a permanent memorial laden with colorful wildflowers, sea grass and a lighted row of flags representing each of the countries which had citizens on the Paris-bound flight.

“We’ve all suffered. We have persevered. Together and apart, we have persevered,” Seaman said.

The midair explosion of Flight 800 moments after the flight left Kennedy Airport spawned a yearlong FBI probe — the biggest in the agency’s history to that point — and initially was thought to have been downed by a bomb or missile. The National Transportation Safety Board eventually concluded that the probable cause was faulty wiring sparking an explosion of overheated vapors in the plane’s center fuel tank.

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