CLARENCE, N.Y. — The woman and daughter who barely escaped when an airplane plowed into their house, killing the woman's husband and all 49 people aboard the plane, returned to the catastrophic scene Wednesday.
While she was there, investigators continued to collect evidence they hope will tell them what brought down the aircraft.
Karen Wielinski was escorted by police onto the site where her home once sat. She and other family members, including daughter Jill, got out of the cars briefly and stayed at the crash site about 15 minutes. Police formed a human barrier to shield them from photographers as they returned to their cars.
The Wielinskis did not speak with reporters Wednesday.
Their house was destroyed when Continental Connection Flight 3407 from Newark, N.J., to Buffalo fell from the sky Thursday night and landed flat on top of the home. Other houses on the quiet suburban street just outside Buffalo were virtually untouched, though one house next door was damaged.
A second group of mourners, believed to be family members of other victims, also visited the site Wednesday.
In her only interview since the crash, Karen Wielinski, 57, told a local radio station she and her daughter were watching television when the aircraft smashed through the roof, pinning them in the wreckage.
"Planes do go over our house, but this one just sounded really different, louder, and I thought to myself, 'If that's a plane, it's going to hit something,'" Wielinski told WBEN-AM the day after the crash. "The next thing I knew the ceiling was on me."
Wielinski said she pushed her way out of the debris and crawled through a hole in the wreckage as fire erupted around her. She said 22-year-old Jill Wielinski managed a similar escape, but her husband, 61-year-old Douglas Wielinski, was trapped.
Investigators on Wednesday removed part of the tail, the largest piece of the aircraft still intact.
The National Transportation Safety Board is analyzing the weather, data from the scene, data from flight recorders, the crew and accounts from other pilots who flew nearby on the night of the accident to try to determine what caused the nation's first deadly crash of a commercial airliner in 2½ years.
Colgan Air, which was operating the flight, issued a statement defending its crew training programs after investigators said they would examine whether the pilot overreacted when an automatic safety system sensed the plane was slowing down dangerously.
The pilot pulled back on the plane's controls after the safety system tried to push the nose downward to gain speed and increase lift. Lorenda Ward, NTSB's chief investigator, said one of many possibilities is the pilot pulled back too hard, bringing the plane's nose too high up in an attempt to prevent the stall and dooming the aircraft.
Flight 3407 was about 1,600 feet above the ground at the time and aviation safety experts said this week that it might have been too low to recover from a stall.