The Groeneveen and Klein-Kruitberg flats stood at the edge of the Bijlmermeer, and it was a Sunday evening in 1992, so most of the people inside were simply at home. Thirty-nine of them died. On board the El Al freighter there were four: three crew and one passenger. The aircraft had left Schiphol bound for Tel Aviv and lost both engines from the right wing shortly after takeoff.
The inquiry found the fuse pins in the engine pylons had failed, and the separating engine took the other one with it. Those pins were meant to let an engine go cleanly if it ever had to. They were redesigned and inspected afterwards, across the fleet. For the people in the flats, and for the families who spent years asking what the cargo had been, that came late.
There's a gathering at the memorial each year, quite small, with the names read aloud. A tree that stood close enough to be scorched came through it and is part of the ground now, which the people who live there asked for.
Dutch researchers followed residents and rescue workers for years afterwards, and a parliamentary inquiry in the late nineties went through the cargo manifests. People had real, persistent symptoms — the studies couldn't tie them to any single exposure, partly because the health monitoring began so long after the fire. Being told "we can't establish it" is a hard answer to live with.