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Photo Album new!	THE CRASH OF FLIGHT 990 / Together in Grief and in Support BY: By Lauren Terrazzano. STAFF WRITER DATE: 11-04-1999 They've been through it before: the seemingly endless wait for news. The knowledge that the recovery of human remains will be slow. The shuttling from sterile hotel rooms to conference room briefings full of government officials. As the days after the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 drag on with few answers and mounting frustration, relatives from a very similar disaster three years ago are embracing the newest members of an informal society of grieving relatives. More than 20 members of the family organization that formed after the July 17, 1996, crash of TWA Flight 800 are on standby to go to Rhode Island to assist those families, the head of the TWA family group said yesterday. They've also begun reaching out to link EgyptAir relatives-many of whom are having trouble dealing with the scene-with TWA families by phone. "Once you've walked that mile, even three years later, you know what to expect," said Aurelie Becker, of St. Petersburg, Fla., who lost her 19-year-old daughter in the TWA crash. "It's important for us to let them know and that they have people who can identify with what they're going through." About a year ago, Heidi Snow, another Flight 800 family member, set up a Web site, www.accesshelp.org, for relatives of crash victims worldwide. Two days ago, she posted a link for the site that will allow EgyptAir families to share information about the disaster and offer support to each other. Tuesday night, the Web site had its first request from a West Coast man who lost his mother on the doomed flight. He was linked by phone yesterday to Ned Brooks, 49, of New Canaan, Conn., who lost his parents in the TWA crash. One of the enduring legacies of the crash of Flight 800 was the passage of the Aviation Disaster Family Assistance Act in 1996, which established guidelines for how airlines should treat families in the aftermath of a crash and designated the National Transportation Safety Board as the coordinator for federal efforts to assist victims and families. The law was expanded in 1997 to include international carriers that fly to and from the United States. Those airlines must now submit disaster plans to the NTSB and the Department of Transportation showing how they would deal with families, should a crash occur. As a result, the relationship between the families, the airline and the investigators is different this time around. Unlike TWA, which used its employees as liaisons to the families in the days after the crash, EgyptAir has contracted with a Wisconsin-based company that specializes in grief counseling and has assigned counselors to each family at the Doubletree Hotel in Newport, R.I., where many are gathered. The airline also is providing Arabic-English translations to many of the victims' families, and Muslim prayer rooms have been set up. NTSB officials said yesterday that they're waiting to see if space becomes available at the hotel to accommodate the TWA families. "It's great to know they are there," said Sharon Bryson, a family affairs specialist at the Safety Board who along with other members of the NTSB has set up a command center at the hotel. The TWA families said they want to provide a roadmap for the challenges that lie ahead. "I hope to give him knowledge that he is not alone in what he is going through," said Brooks, 49, speaking of the EgyptAir relative he spoke to yesterday, whom he declined to name. "If our experience resulted in his experience being even the slightest less traumatic, at least something came out of it," Brooks said. Copyright 1999, Newsday Inc. back
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