The commemoration of the Bijlmer disaster is being organized for the first time tonight by local residents. 31 years ago, an El Al cargo plane crashed in the Amsterdam district, killing 43 people. That still causes a lot of sadness today.
The commemoration will not be an official and solemn affair, but a meeting of fellow sufferers. That’s what the new organizers want. Tine Bakker is a member of the residents’ committee that organized the commemoration. “I just came home from a visit to my mother. She lives in Sliedrecht,” she says on NH Radio about the evening in question on October 4, 1992. “I was walking downstairs to the apartment and heard a lot of roaring engines and then a big fireball.”
Tine quickly walked to a telephone booth to call her mother. “Something happened, but I’m OK,” she said. “After that, telephone traffic was no longer possible.” She didn’t know yet what had happened. “I thought the garage was going to explode and I ran to the back of the apartment.” There she met someone who said a passenger plane had crashed. “I thought: ‘I don’t want that on my mind’, because you can imagine what to expect.”
Monument
It turned out to be an El Al cargo plane that crashed through the Groeneveen and Klein Kruitberg flats at 6:36 p.m. Tine Bakker did not go to the commemoration for the first few years. “I found it too painful,” she says.
Tine cleaned up the monument last night for tonight. She looks at it about once a week. “But I’m not really going to sit there and commemorate.”
It’s been 31 years, but it still feels very fresh to Tine. “That is the same for all the people I speak to. There has never actually been any processing or victim assistance for residents, because so much help was needed for the people who really needed it, that it has been a bit lacking. I think That’s why it’s still alive.”
Commemoration
The commemoration is no longer organized by the municipality, but there was still a need for it to continue. “Certainly, because the whole aftermath is still so fresh,” says Tine. “It’s especially because certain things are just not released never ending story This afternoon, Tine will ensure that the flowers you bring are given a nice place.
The commemoration starts at 5:30 PM at the monument to the air disaster.