When Germanwings Flight 9525 crashed into the French Alps on Tuesday, it stoked painful memories for Jim Brokaw. The Brunswick resident endured the same mind-numbing disbelief when EgyptAir 990 was flown into the Atlantic Ocean off Nantucket in 1999, killing 150 people including his father and stepmother.
“This particular crash is devastating for everybody who was connected to EgyptAir 990,” Brokaw said. “When the news came out the other day that this was probably a deliberate act … it’s been difficult to be thinking about these things again.”
Brokaw helped organize the group Families of EgyptAir 990, which he said was instrumental in pressing the Egyptian airline and others to respond to family concerns. Now he has reached out – through the German government – to the families of those killed on the Germanwings flight to offer the advice and empathy of someone who has endured a tragedy of that magnitude.
“Nobody – nobody – is equipped to handle a situation like this,” he said Friday. “Losing somebody in an air disaster … is a life-changing experience. Everything turns upside down – right now. There are economic as well as emotional consequences to be dealt with immediately. Beyond all this … you have the revelation this is the result of someone’s conscious decision. That is another quantum level of difficulty.”
Rebecca Hoffmann Frances, director of clinical innovation at Maine Behavioral Healthcare, said such events lead to complex grief that can be extremely difficult for the mind to process.
Death itself is tragic, and sudden death, particularly of someone who is relatively young, is shocking and feels unfair. To die in an act of violence feels like a violation of basic human rights, she said.
“Someone flying a plane is supposed to fly the plane and get you home safely,” she said. When that doesn’t happen, “they call that a break in the social contract … so they’re not only grieving the loss, but grieving a belief system, that the world is not a safe place or fair.”
The Germanwings flight from Barcelona, Spain, to Duesseldorf, Germany, crashed in a remote section of the Alps. Investigators believe co-pilot Andreas Lubitz intentionally flew the passenger plane into a mountain in France. Six crew members and 144 passengers, including three Americans as well as 16 German high school students who had been on an exchange trip, were on board.
When EgyptAir 990 crashed, the National Transportation Safety Board determined that a co-pilot intentionally flew the plane into the ocean shortly after takeoff, though Egyptian authorities maintain the plane had a mechanical failure.
Brokaw was living in Indiana at the time. He was asleep with his wife on a Sunday morning in October when his sister called to say their father’s plane was missing.
Brokaw, who was 48 and working as a computer programmer, eventually set up a website and a private message board for the families of those killed in the crash. Later, he was asked to start a more formal organization – Families of EgyptAir 990 – that became a contact point for the NTSB, the company hired to recover remains and personal affects, and other organizations. More than 100 people signed on.
Now, Brokaw has contacted people in Germany through Facebook offering the benefit of his experience and trying to encourage the creation of a similar group there.
“That’s what can give the families a sense of agency in the situation rather than simply being dependent, passive entities that have to be taken care of,” he said. “It was enormously important, at least for me, to have a sense of changing things for the better, having found myself and my family in such a horrible position.”
The association negotiated with the airline for advances on money damages, arranged for extended grief counseling and provided the opportunity to meet directly with airline representatives.
Brokaw hasn’t heard back yet but he’s not surprised. It is very early and people are trying to process what happened, he said.
This week’s crash stirs up memories, he said, but it’s nothing like it was at the time, with “unpredictable mood swings that crash over you like huge ocean waves. One moment you’re fine and the next moment, you’re a complete basket case.”
Recovery of remains was hugely important, he said. Some, like him, were fortunate to have some small part to cremate and bury at the monument in Rhode Island, which the family association helped design. For many others, there were no remains identifiable even with DNA.
Processing grief is much more difficult when there is no tangible evidence of the person’s death, said Hoffmann Frances of Maine Behavioral Healthcare.
“Our imaginations are powerful … if you don’t have any proof, there’s nothing to say, ‘Yes, it happened. It’s real.'”
People who have shared in a painful loss can benefit emotionally from interacting, Hoffmann Frances said.
“When we can find connections through pain, in the long term it’s really good. In the immediate aftermath, it’s not necessarily going to make that pain any easier.”
The group formed after the 1999 crash is no longer active, Brokaw said.
“My main concern was honoring my father with a memorial that I felt was appropriate. When that was accomplished, I really didn’t feel like perpetuating a memory of mass murder.”
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