Original source : http://stories.cbn.com
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Author : the admin
On Good Friday 2012, A Navy Jet doing routine practice
exercise crashed down into an apartment complex in Virginia Beach, VA.
What happened next has become known as the "Good Friday Miracle."
It was Good Friday, a little past noon. School had just been
let out for Easter break in Virginia
Beach, Virginia when
something completely unexpected happened. Cheryl McKee owns a pet supply store in Virginia Beach and says, “The air
started vibrating.” Ten-year-old Isabelle Travers was heading out to play with a
friend and remembers, “I just heard a loud noise, and it went chick-a-boom,
boom, BOOM!!!” Zsa Zsa Palagyi thought it might have been a tornado or a
terrorist attack, “There was all this black stuff, I mean like heavy, dark,
black smoke just going by the window.” Ben Dishner says it looked like a war zone. “I’m like
My God, no no no. I’m just screaming NO, NO, NO!”
It was an F/A-18D Hornet that had malfunctioned right after
takeoff from the nearby Oceana Naval Base and slammed into the Mayfair Mews
apartment complex in a highly populated residential neighborhood. 911 received a number of calls. “Virginia Beach 911. Where’s the
Emergency?” An eye-witness replied, “A navy plane just went down off of 24th Street.
The apartment building is completely destroyed.” After an explosion, another caller is recorded as saying,
“Oh my God, it’s terrible, the whole thing is on fire. And it’s a senior
community. Oh my God, all those old people. Oh my God… oh my Jesus.”
The jet’s two-man crew ejected, just 50 feet above ground.
Then, the massive aircraft made impact. Patrick Kavanaugh was there. “I saw the pilot laying
on the ground here, on his side, hands in the air, white as a sheet. He
was still connected to his parachute, which was connected to the roof of this
building here. We had to cut the lines, get him free of the parachute. A
bunch of us picked him up, dragged him to the front parking lot area, away from
the flames. The heavy black smoke started to come over the rooftop here
and I knew we had a matter of minutes before the fire was going to come this
way.” As the ominous black smoke rose from the crash site and
countless emergency responders ran to the scene, everyone expected the worst.
Neighbor Cheryl Mckee declares, “I saw it go in and I
thought, oh gosh, they’re all dead!” Patrick K looked back at the buildings, “And I just counted
the people that had perished. Because I’m here everyday, I’m retired, I
don’t go anywhere. I got to the front and looked and “they’re dead,
they’re passed away, she’s gone.” Mayor Will Sessoms of Virginia
Beach feared the same, “When I came over here, about
right where we’re standing, there was a massive fire still going on.
There were buildings to my right that were pretty well demolished. The
first question I asked the fire chief was how many casualties do we have?”
As the tragedy unfolded throughout the day, it became
worldwide news, and many people prayed. “I’ve heard too many stories through this tragedy where I
should have done this, but I did this instead,” declares Ben Dishner. Ben lived and worked part-time at The Mayfair Mews before
the navy jet destroyed his home. “There’s no earthly reason for me to be standing here
talking to you today,” Ben continues. “I take my lunch religiously at
11:30am to 12:30pm each day and by all rights, I should have been in my house
playing computer games, but God told me to set some more tile. I’m like,
but it’s 5 minutes ‘til twelve, I’m passed lunch. You know I’m gonna go to
lunch, and something said nah, just set these 8 more tiles. 8 more tiles – well
I say 8 more tiles saved my life, but God saved my life.”
The jet crashed through Ben’s apartment window and set his
place on fire. But since he wasn’t there, his life was spared. As
was his wife’s and his father in law’s life. “Well my father in law, we
had to take him to the hospital a couple of months before. He had some
complications and had to go to rehab. If he hadn’t have gone to rehab, he
would have been home. A week before the crash, they changed my
wife’s schedule. If they hadn’t changed her schedule, she’d have been
sitting on the couch when the plane came through the front window.”
Sandy Hall would normally have been at home when the jet
crashed, as well – but her plans changed at the last minute on that Friday
morning, saving her life, too. Sandy says, “I have a cleaning business and a client had
texted me and asked me to come later being that it was Good Friday and her son
was home from school, so I texted her back and said ‘how about around
10?’ She said ‘perfect.’ So I left her at 20 to ten instead of leaving
here at 8 ‘o clock like I normally do. And normally I’m home at noon. Well, it was about 12:30pm, quarter to one when I got the phone call at work
that a jet had crashed.” While Sandy
was out, her apartment and everything in it went up in flames.
But even people that WERE home made it out safely. Cheryl McKee owns a pet supply store right next to Mayfair
Mews and remembers, “I actually watched a man walk out of the apartment that
the plane went in. He came out the front door, the plane went down the
back. And he came out and didn’t really realize something had happened.” Linda Warnick was in her 2 story townhouse with her
grandchildren Egan and Haven when the jet made impact. But they too made
it through their front door without a scratch. “People across in the other townhouses told us that the heat
was so intense that they couldn’t come out their front doors,” Linda
says. “They went out the back doors.” Egan remembers, “I didn’t even feel nothing. I didn’t
even feel the flames. It’s kind of like God protected us.” Haven didn’t feel the flames, either. “I felt God just
around me, hugging me.” Linda adds, “At one point she said, ‘God encapsulated us in a bubble and
saved us from the heat.’”
What could have gone down in history as a tremendous
tragedy is remembered more today as a miracle. Linda Warnick states, “God definitely was on the scene that
day. Because otherwise if it had gone a few feet further, we wouldn’t be
here today to tell the story. And it definitely makes you think, you
might not be thinking about God, but He’s right there all the time thinking
about you.” Sandy Hall adds, “What else kept me from being in my
home that day? What else kept me and anybody from being hurt? Not
even the pilots.” Mayor Sessoms declares, “If there’s ever been a miracle and
had prayers answered, this was the case.” Ben Dishner concludes, “God had His hand all around this.”
~Blog Admin~
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