(WXYZ) — Wednesday marks 36 years since the deadliest plane crash in Michigan history. On Aug. 16, 1987, Northwest Flight 255 took off from Romulus headed for Arizona — it didn’t make it far.
Investigators blame a number of pilot errors on the crash, but the most important takeaway is the lives lost: 156 people were killed that day — all but one person on board and two people who were in vehicles near I-94 and Middlebelt Road.
Watch our report from 2012 on the 25th anniversary of the crash in the video player above or below.
The firefighters who arrived that night had no idea what would lay ahead. The initial call for a plane crash shed little light on the fact that it was a passenger plane — Lt. John Thiede of the Romulus Fire Department explained his rescue efforts to 7 Action News in 2013. He explained that he and another firefighters had heard a faint moan, or cry, and were trying to locate where it was coming from.
“I was checking three or four passengers. After about the fourth one, I saw a chair upside down,” Thiede said. “I moved the chair to the right and checked the lady underneath — there was no vital signs on her. Then I saw the arm coming out of the chair.”
That arm belonged to Cecelia Cichan — she’s since married and now goes by Cecelia Crocker.
Northwest Flight 255 Report by WXYZ-TV Channel 7 Detroit on Scribd
**Correction: a previous version of this article stated an incorrect number of years since the crash. The story has been updated and we regret the error.
