Another Day of Caches in Sioux City, IA 8/11/2010

Off we went again this morning across the bridge into the other state (Iowa) and our first cache in the downtown area. It was on a downtown street corner on a traffic light pole way up high and it was another nano. Then it just so happened they were having their Farmer's Market in the Civic Center parking lot so we just had to stop. Well did we find some good stuff. We got some tomatoes and fresh sweet corn. Also a huge loaf of home baked bread that was onion and feta cheese flavor. We also bought a delicious home made crumb pie was called cherry berry rhubarb pie. It had cherries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and rhubarb in it and it was out of this world. Then it was on to our next 7 caches which were along the bike and walking trail on the IA waterfront.

First cache was a nano on an interpretive sign about the mouth of Floyd River. The Lewis and Clark party camped overnight at the mouth of the Floyd River after the death of Sergeant Charles Floyd and named the river after him. On the morning of August 21 in 1804 they past this point as the informational sign explains.
August 20, 1804, the Corps of Discovery, led by Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, found themselves near present day Sioux City, Iowa. The Corps was just over three months into their journey and had paddled, pushed and pulled their small flotilla of boats over 500 miles up the Missouri River.
It was on August 20, two hundred years ago today, that the Corps faced its first tragedy and only fatality, the death of Sergeant Charles Floyd. The first death of an American soldier west of the Mississippi River.
Sgt. Floyd was a 22-year-old Kentuckian whom Captain Clark called “a man of much merit”. He was a cousin of another expedition member, Sgt. Nathaniel Pryor. As was ordered of all of the Sergeants on the journey, Floyd had kept a daily journal of the trip until August 18, when he fell too ill to continue writing. He was complaining of extreme stomach pains and nothing Lewis did relieved the symptoms. On the 20th, Floyd died of what Lewis called “Biliose Chorlick”, what medical historians actually believe was a ruptured appendix. Clark recorded it in his journal of August 20-
“Sergeant Floyd much weaker and no better...Floyd as bad as he can be no pulse & nothing will stay a moment on his stomach or bowels. Floyd died with a great deal of composure, before his death he said to me, ‘I am going away I want you to write me a letter.’ We buried him on the top of the bluff. 1/2 Mile below [is] a small river to which we gave his name, he was buried with the Honors of War much lamented, a seeder post with the name Sergeant. C. Floyd died here 20th of August 1804 was fixed at the head of his grave. This Man at all times gave us proof of his firmness and determined resolution to do service to his country and honor to himself. After paying all the honor to our deceased brother we camped in the mouth of Floyds River about 30 yards wide, a beautiful evening”. While we were there we also saw the South Bottoms Memorial which was a working-class neighborhood located west of the stockyards that was later destroyed to make way for Interstate 29 and a channelization project on the Floyd River. A Bottoms Memorial was created in 1997 to honor the immigrants and families who made this area of town their home.


Next cache after we drove by the Argosy Casino Riverboat was another nano on a park bench along the riverfront. Then it was over to the Larsen Park Amphitheater which was a lovely venue along the waterfront.

Next cache was under a light post skirt at the Spirit of Siouxland United Flight 232 Tragedy. The flight took off at 14:09 (CDT) from Stapleton International Airport, Denver, Colorado, bound for O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois with ongoing service to Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At 15:16, while the plane was in a shallow right turn at 37,000 feet, the fan disk of its tail-mounted General Electric CF6-6 engine failed and disintegrated. The debris from the failed disk was not contained by the engine's nacelle. Pieces of the structure penetrated the aircraft tail section in numerous places, including the horizontal stabilizer. The pieces of shrapnel punctured the lines of all three hydraulic systems, allowing the fluid to rapidly drain away.
Captain Alfred C. Haynes and his flight crew (First Officer William Records, who was flying, and Second Officer Dudley Dvorak, flight engineer) felt a jolt going through the aircraft. Warning lights illuminated and indicated that the autopilot had disengaged and the tail-mounted number two engine was malfunctioning. The co-pilot noticed that the airliner was off course, and moved his control column to correct this, but the plane did not respond. The flight crew discovered that the pressure gauges for each of the three hydraulic systems were registering zero, and they realized that the initial failure had left all control surfaces immovable. The three hydraulic systems were separated such that a single event in one system would not disable the other systems, but lines for all three systems shared the same ten-inch wide route through the tail where the engine debris penetrated, and beyond that there was no backup system, a fact which the NTSB later recommended be remedied.
Due to the damage in the tail, the plane had a continual tendency to turn right, and without flight controls was difficult to maintain on a stable course. It began to slowly oscillate vertically in a phugoid cycle, which is characteristic of planes in which control surfaces command is lost. With each iteration of the cycle the aircraft lost approximately 1500 feet of altitude. Dennis E. Fitch, an off-duty UAL DC-10 flight instructor, was seated in the first class section and offered his assistance. After entering the cockpit, Fitch discovered that the flight crew had resorted to a method of controlling the aircraft through adjusting the throttles of the remaining two engines; running one engine faster than the other to turn the plane (differential thrust), and accelerating or decelerating in order to gain or lose altitude (symmetric thrust). Using this method, it was possible to mitigate the phugoid cycle and make rough steering adjustments. At one point Fitch manually lowered the landing gear in flight, hoping that this would force trapped hydraulic fluid back into the lines allowing some movement of control surfaces. Although the gear lowered successfully, there was no improvement in control response as all the fluid had been lost through the punctured lines.
Haynes kept his sense of humor during the emergency, as recorded on the plane's CVR:

Fitch: I'll tell you what, we'll have a beer when this is all done.
Haynes: Well I don't drink, but I'll sure as hell have one.

and later:

Sioux City Approach: United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, the wind's currently three six zero at one one; three sixty at eleven. You're cleared to land on any runway.
Haynes: [laughter] Roger. [laughter] You want to be particular and make it a runway, huh? (Haynes was alluding to the extreme difficulty in controlling the aircraft and their extremely low chances of making it to the airport at all)

A more serious remark often quoted from Haynes was made when ATC asked the crew to make a left turn to keep them clear of the city:

Haynes: Whatever you do, keep us away from the city.

Haynes later noted that "We were too busy [to be scared]. You must maintain your composure in the airplane or you will die. You learn that from your first day flying."

Landing was originally planned on the 9,000 foot Runway 31. The difficulties in controlling the aircraft made lining up almost impossible. While dumping excess fuel, the plane executed a series of mostly right-hand turns (it was easier to turn the plane in this direction) with the intention of coming out at the end lined up with runway 31. When they came out they were instead left with an approach on the shorter Runway 22 of 6,600 feet, with little capacity to maneuver.
Fire trucks had been placed on runway 22, anticipating a landing on runway 31, and there was a scramble as the trucks rushed out of the way. All the vehicles parked there got out of the way before the plane touched down.
Fitch continued to control the aircraft's descent by adjusting engine thrust. With the loss of all hydraulics, the crew were unable to control airspeed independent from sink rate. On final descent, the aircraft was going 240 knots and sinking at 1850 feet per minute, while a safe landing would require 140 knots and 300 feet per minute. The aircraft began to sink faster while on final approach and veer to the right. The tip of the right wing hit the runway first, spilling fuel which ignited immediately. The tail section broke off from the force of the impact and the rest of the aircraft bounced several times, shedding the landing gear and engine nacelles and breaking the fuselage into several main pieces. On the final impact the right wing was sheared off and the main part of the aircraft skidded sideways, rolled over on to its back, and slid to a stop upside down in a corn field to the right side of runway 22. Witnesses reported that the aircraft cartwheeled but the investigation did not confirm this. News reports that the aircraft cartwheeled were due to misinterpretation of the video of the crash that showed the flaming right wing tumbling end-over-end. Debris from Engine #2 (including the fractured fan disk) and other parts from the tail structures of the plane, were later found on farmland near Alta, Iowa, approximately 60 miles northeast of Sioux City.
The plane landed askew, causing the explosion and fire seen in this still from local news station video.
Of the 296 people on board, 111 died in the crash. Most were killed by injuries sustained in the multiple impacts, but many in the middle fuselage section directly above the fuel tanks died from smoke inhalation in the post-crash fire. The majority of the 185 survivors were seated behind first class and ahead of the wings. Many passengers were able to walk out through the ruptures to the structure, and in many cases got lost in the high field of corn adjacent to the runway until rescue workers arrived on the scene and escorted them to safety.

Of all of the passengers:

* 35 died due to smoke inhalation (None were in first class)
* 75 died for reasons other than smoke inhalation (17 were in first class)
* 41 were seriously injured (8 were in first class)
* 121 had minor injuries (1 was in first class)
* 13 had no injuries (None were in first class)

The passengers who died for reasons other than smoke inhalation were seated in rows 1-4, 24-25, and 28-38. Passengers who died due to smoke inhalation were seated in rows 14, 16, and 22-30. A person assigned to 20H moved to an unknown seat and died due to smoke inhalation.

One crash survivor died 31 days after the accident; in accordance with official rules, the NTSB classified his injuries as "serious."

Fifty-two children, including four lap children, were on board the flight due to the United Airlines "Children's Day" promotion. Eleven children, including one lap child, died. Many of the children had traveled alone.

The memorial was very lovely as you can see by the pictures. As you walk down the sidewalk there are 7 boulders with plaques on them with sayings from the day of the crash on each one. As you reach the end of the sidewalk there is another plaque relating the story of the crash. You continue on the walk around a pillared archway down to a statue of a man holding a child and another plaque. It was very lovely and very well done.


Next cache was down along the river close to the pier of the Pacific Short Line Bridge that I mentioned 2 days ago. This pier is on the opposite side of the river from the other one. Next cache was at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Museum under a light skirt. Next was a cache in front of the Sergeant Floyd Welcome Center. This cache has a story also. We walked over to the coords and found it easily as it was an ammo box buried in a wooden sleeve on the lawn and it had a blue top on it and was very easy to see and find. I reached down to pick the top up and did so and a snake slithered down under the container. Well if I didn't jump. I got a stick and lifted the ammo box out by the handle and under it was about 4 snakes all the same kind and who knows what kind. Well we didn't want to hang around long so we dragged the box away signed the log and I picked it up and dropped it back in the hole on top of the snakes and beat feet out of there. Don't really know what kind they were but they were about 18" long about an inch in diameter. Didn't really care. Our last cache was at the end of the riverwalk on a bench by a fountain. Well by the we were hot enough to fry an egg on so back to the coach for the rest of the day. Heat index was 110 today. Well that's about all for today from here so until tomorrow we love and miss you all. Mom & Dad Dori & Dick