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Heavy loss of life devastates Dominicans

Elvira Rodriquez comforts her daughter at a vigil for the victims of Monday's crash. PHOTO: AP

Hilda Yolanda Mayor escaped the World Trade Center attack long enough to board the jet that tore into a New York neighborhood on Monday.

"She was my treasure," her mother, Virginia Hernandez, said from the family's Dominican home, where relatives wailed their grief.

The Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center -- where Mayor had worked in a first-floor restaurant -- left 41 Dominicans among the dead and missing. But the anguish of victims' cries echoing through Santo Domingo's Las Americas International Airport indicated the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 had taken a toll ever closer to home.

"Today is worse than the 11th," said Leonidas Araujo Quesada, the manager of an airport cafe. "On the 11th, there were people crying, but it was for everybody. Today it is for Dominicans."

About half a million Dominicans live in New York, one of its largest immigrant groups, according to consular officials.

Mayor, like many others, had built a life firmly rooted in two worlds: a US citizen who worked in Manhattan, she also stayed in touch with relatives in her Caribbean birthplace near San Pedro de Macoris.

The 26-year-old had planned to vacation with her mother and her two children, who had arrived from New York two weeks earlier.

"We were going to make a meal. We were going to have all the family together," Hernandez said.

It was one of many plans that evaporated as lives were cut short Monday.

"Not the child, please not the child!" sobbed Germania Brito, who was at the airport to meet her sister Mariana Flores and husband John with their 2-year-old son, Isaias.

The jetliner, carrying 260 people, crashed moments after takeoff in a residential neighborhood 8km from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City on its way to Santo Domingo. Most passengers were Dominican, officials said.

Dominican Republic President Hipolito Mejia declared three days of national mourning.

Dozens of relatives came to Santo Domingo's airport for the official passenger list. As the victims became known, shrieks echoed as men collapsed in tears and women sobbed uncontrollably. Psychologists were on hand for counseling.

"Oh my God!" screamed Miriam Fajardo, when it was confirmed that her sister, Norma Lilian Baloi, and three nephews, were aboard the flight. "I hadn't seen them in eight years. Now they're gone."

It was not immediately known what caused the plane to break apart and crash in flames into a waterfront neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York

While many assumed the worst, Eduardo Fresola was told his brother missed the flight because his 7-year-old sister got lost in the airport on her way back from the bathroom.

"I can't believe it. He wasn't on the plane!" exclaimed Fresola. "He's alive. He's safe."
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