NTSB Briefs in West Palm Beach Monday as Military Trail Stays Closed and Leonard High Stays Dark
The Learjet investigation gets its first full day on Monday: federal investigators on site, a briefing in West Palm Beach, Military Trail still closed with county detours posted, about 600 neighbors in shelters, and the high school half a mile away closed for the day.
Monday is the investigation's first full day. The National Transportation Safety Board, which leads the inquiry into Sunday's Learjet 60 crash in Greenacres, has investigators arriving at the site Sunday and Monday and has planned a media briefing in West Palm Beach for Monday, with the time and location to be announced. The board typically issues a preliminary report within about 30 days. No cause has been established, and officials had announced none as of early Monday; the Associated Press has reported that air traffic control recordings captured the crew describing icing and moderate turbulence before requesting a climb — a report investigators will examine, not a finding.
The ground problem is a closed road. Military Trail remains closed between Cresthaven Boulevard and 10th Avenue North, with the county's emergency closure running between 10th Avenue North and Purdy Lane/Alameda Drive and only emergency vehicles allowed in the closed section. The county's detours send east-west traffic to 10th Avenue North and Purdy Lane or Alameda Drive, and north-south traffic to Haverhill Road and Kirk Road; County Administrator Joseph Abruzzo said Sunday evening that officials hoped to establish an alternate route for Military Trail by Monday. About 600 residents of the mobile home community beside the site were moved to shelters, and officials said Sunday there were no confirmed injuries on the ground. The nine people aboard the jet, which had flown from Austin toward the Bahamas, had not been publicly identified as of early Monday.
For Palm Beach County families, the closure has a school attached to it. John I. Leonard High School, half a mile from the crash site, is closed Monday while crews and investigators work — the only district school shut for the crash, on a day when heavy rain into the morning could also delay buses elsewhere in the district. Every district school is out Tuesday for Election Day in any case. What Monday decides is narrower: what the NTSB's first briefing says, and whether Military Trail gets its alternate route.
