UNTIL a TWA jumbo jet exploded in the sky above East Moriches, the small Long Island town was known only for its duck farms and picturesque clapboard summer houses.
Now residents fear their town will be remembered as another Lockerbie, the village in Scotland that had a similar tragedy visited upon it in 1988 when a bomb exploded on a Pan Am plane.
"I thought about Lockerbie and also Oklahoma, especially if ii turns out that this was terrorism," said Ms Jean Blank, referring to the bombing last year that destroyed a federal office building in Oklahoma City.
FBI investigators yesterday were still calling Wednesday night's crash of TWA Flight 800 with a loss of 230 lives, an accident, but some experts said it may have been sabotage.
Since the crash, the sound of search helicopters overhead has invaded the quiet town, while nearby Moriches Bay is filled with rescue boats.
Mrs Katherine Cavanaugh, who saw the fiery crash while she was gardening at her farm on the bay, also thought about the comparison with Lockerbie.
"We're a small town of people who look out for each other," she said in the hardware store she runs with her son Mike. "That Lockerbie was running through my mind too, that I didn't want East Moriches to be only known for such a horrible event."
Just outside the centre of the town of a few thousand people there are several duck farms and neat streets of clapboard beach cottages with lush green gardens.
"We've got like six stores here. It's a quiet place," said Mr Les Chermona, a real estate broker whose wife Sherrie manages the stationery store.
"I was born and raised here and everybody in town is shocked that something like this would ever happen to us. We especially feel sorry for the people and the families involved. It's a disaster," he said.
With teams of investigators pouring in, truckloads of evidence driven out day and night and an invasion by media from all over the world, East Moriches might never be the same. It certainly will not forget the tragedy that occurred just a few miles off its shore.
. The pilot and co pilot of TWA Flight 800 were highly experienced and had both been with the airline for more than 30 years, according to TWA officials. Capt Steven Snyder (57) from Stratford, Connecticut, had 17,269 hours flying time and 32 years with TWA. His copilot, Capt Ralph Kevorkian (58), had 18,791 hours and 31 years.