Beyond the fears and beyond the grief, the residents of the New York neighbourhood of Queens are trying to erase images from their minds that are far too graphic for television coverage or pictures.
The crash of an American Airlines flight with 260 people aboard did more than destroy a few homes and ignite a few fires.
For hours yesterday, charred bodies were strewn on lawns and over cars.
"There were flames everywhere. The trees were on fire; the sidewalks were on fire," said Mr Tyrone Sperling, an eye-witness. As the aircraft stripped off the tops of trees, bodies began falling from it.
"They looked like charred pieces of wood. I've never seen anything like this before. The bodies, their clothes were burned off," he said.
Federal investigators, meanwhile, spent the night scouring the aircraft's wreckage.
One of two flight data recorders and the voice recorder - the so-called black box - have been found.
With the help of lights, the recovery continued through the night as firefighters and dogs went through the rubble.
Numerous eye-witnesses on the ground reported hearing an explosion from the aircraft and investigators are trying to determine if such an explosion occurred or whether the loud noise was simply the sound of an engine separating from the aircraft.
A catastrophic mechanical failure could also have caused such a noise.
It emerged that the aircraft that crashed yesterday had made three emergency landings in the last 10 years.
One of the engines had recently been overhauled, about 694 service hours ago, but the right engine had 9,788 hours of service since its last overhaul.
There have been documented failures involving the family of CF6 General Electric engines - the type on this aircraft - though none involved fatalities.
The Federal Aviation Administration warned just last month that its own study of problems with these engines indicates a need for tougher, mandatory inspections of possibly worn parts.
On October 5th, an FAA order came after it had told airlines in June to begin other inspections of the same engines for cracks in certain rotor disks, a component within the engines.
A month earlier, a problem with the same type of engine forced the emergency landing of a Monarch Airlines aircraft in Portugal.
Documents from the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch said a rotor blade snapped, puncturing the engine's housing with a three-inch hole and causing minor damage to the wing.
The pilots reported dramatic vibration and British officials reported there had been "several similar failures prior to this event".
The National Transportation Safety Board warned separately, less than a year ago, that an in-flight failure of these engines could send hot metal fragments tearing through important control systems or fuel lines - and could cause an aircraft to crash.
The NTSB cautioned it was "way too early" to connect the crash with other failures involving the type of engine that powered the aircraft.
The NTSB said that the quality of the voice recorder was good, and that the co-pilot was at the controls, which was not unusual.
It was possible that the other flight data recorder could have fallen into the water and that sonar might be used to search for it.
The plane's vertical stabiliser - the tail fin - was found floating in Jamaica Bay, just offshore.
Visible on the wreckage were the American Airlines logo and an American flag.
One smoking engine was found intact in a parking lot at a Texaco station two blocks from the crash site, where it had missed the petrol pumps by no more than six feet.
Part of the second engine was found another block away, in a back garden.
While federal officials continued to insist there were no signs of terrorism, investigators nonetheless scoured records of who had access recently to the aircraft, which had routine maintenance the night before it departed from New York's Kennedy Airport en route to the Dominican Republic.
Authorities said early signs pointed to an accident, basing their assessment partly on communications heard on the cockpit voice recorder.
But they did not rule out sabotage or other causes.
"We're not going to exclude that possibility until the investigation goes much further than this," Mr George Black, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said yesterday on NBC's Today show.
Investigators still had not found the flight data recorder - the plane's other black box - which tracks speed and actions of the engine and instruments.
"The communications from the cockpit were normal up until the last few seconds before the crash," said NTSB head, Ms Marion Blakey.
The mayor of New York, Mr Rudolph Giuliani, said yesterday that 262 bodies had been recovered.
On Monday, Deputy Police Commissioner Joseph Dunne said 265 bodies had been recovered, including a man found holding a baby.
Mr Dunne did not give details on how many people might have died on the ground.
Six to nine people in the Belle Harbor neighbourhood were still missing, he said.
Mr Giuliani said he spoke to President Bush from the scene.
"He said: 'New York City is really being tested. It's a shame.'
"I said: 'Mr President, New York City is up to the test'."