Here, he could describe how the slanting parallel planes of fire-escape ladders running up the side of a tenement building reminded him of a sequence of solos played by "young men/tensioned tight with too many burdens/not theirs alone".
Before long, local news footage showed flames emanating from a long black object, evoking the image of a plane on fire.
Prosecutors showed a video demonstrating the type of explosion that could have occurred on Northwest Airlines Flight 253, which originated in Amsterdam, but that for a technical problem resulted only in Mr. Abdulmutallab's setting himself and a wall of the plane on fire.
Passengers heard popping noises resembling firecrackers, smelled an odor, and saw the suspect's pants, leg and the wall of the plane on fire.
WASHINGTON — Boeing acknowledged on Tuesday that its original tests of the lithium-ion batteries on its 787 planes underestimated the risks of fire, though it defended its previous assessment that such a hazard was extremely unlikely.
The alternative that the conventions which have kept civilian planes out of the line of fire have broken down is too depressing to countenance.
British Airways briefly suspended its Concorde flights, but went back to regular service the day after the crash, which killed all 100 passengers, 9 members of the crew aboard and 5 people who were on the ground in the town of Gonesse, where the plane crashed in a ball of fire.
Then the tower she was in rocked as the second plane hit, and a backdraft of fire barreled down the hallway toward her.
Miriam Rodrigues Martinez, who lives near the crash site, told local media the plane "looked like a ball of fire falling from the sky".
Whether you're seeing it from the air or at ground level, this is what your senses struggle with in the open country, such flat planes worked over with hieroglyphics born of fire, erosion, meteor showers, drought and epochal passages of time.
Israeli television showed frightening scenes of blazes closing in on mid-rise apartment buildings in Haifa, as planes swooped over neighborhoods, leaving trails of fire retardant in their wake.
