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Airliner Leaves Runway, Burns in Denver Takeoff
DENVER -- A Continental Airlines jet taking off from Denver veered off the runway into a ravine and caught fire Saturday night, forcing passengers to evacuate on emergency slides and injuring nearly 40 people, officials said.
No deaths were reported, but 38 people were taken to hospitals, said Kim Day, Denver International Airport manager of aviation. None of the 107 passengers and five crew members was reported in critical condition.
The cause of the accident was not immediately known. The weather in Denver was cold but not snowy when Flight 1404 took off from for Houston about 6:20 p.m.
The plane veered off course about 2,000 feet from the end of the runway and did not appear to be airborne, Day said.
It was not known when the plane caught fire, but ground crews put out the flames quickly, said airport spokesman Jeff Green. The 112 people on board made it out on through slides on the Boeing 737.
The accident closed the airport's west airfield and caused delays of 40 minutes, Day said.
Cause of Skyway Collapse Probed
ATLANTA -- Federal investigators were working through the weekend to determine what caused a pedestrian bridge being built high above an Atlanta park to collapse, killing one man and injuring 18 other workers.
Contractors were pouring concrete on the "canopy walk" at the Atlanta Botanical Garden when it crumbled Friday morning, sending workers hurtling as much as 40 feet to the forest below. The Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration was investigating Saturday, but spokesman Mike Wald said it could take months to determine the cause.
The 30-acre garden, near Piedmont Park north of downtown, will stay closed through the weekend out of respect for the workers and their families, according to a statement on the garden's Web site. It is set to reopen Monday.
The Web site describes the collapsed skyway as the "only canopy level pathway of its kind in the U.S."
