Two people unaccounted for after Miami crash
     MIAMI (August 8, 1997 2:28 p.m. EDT) ---- Two people who might
 have been in the vicinity of Miami International Airport at the time
 a cargo plane crashed never came home, police said Friday, raising
 fears that people had died on the ground after all.
     Metro-Dade police assistant director Sam Williams said his
 agency was checking reports that relatives of two people had con-
 tacted them when their loved ones did not return home. He would not
 specify their gender or age or say what they might have been doing
 in the area of Thursday's crash.
     "We have not made any direct connection yet," said Metro-Dade
 spokeswoman Linda O'Brien. "Until we have a body, we won't know for
 sure."
     Earlier, authorities had considered Thursday's noon-hour crash
 as somewhat of a miracle because it appeared that only the four
 people in the DC-8 cargo plane had died even though a busy business
 area was hit.
     Three bodies were recovered and the fourth person on the Fine
 Air plane was missing and presumed dead. Crews continued to search
 the wreckage Friday.
     Nearly 70,000 people work in the district on the airport's edge,
 where the aging DC-8 wobbled and went down sharply, skidding the
 length of a football field over busy 72nd Avenue, which carries
 30,000 cars a day.
    "The nose of the plane came right through my front door," William
 Bartomeu, who runs a hobby and collectible shop, told the Sun-
 Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. "That was my last customer -- a plane
 that came though my front door!"
     At least two people on the ground suffered minor injuries.
 Panicked workers ran screaming from warehouses and small businesses
 in the area known as Airport West.
     "When I first saw it, I thought 20 people, minimum, were killed
 on the ground," said Bruce Fish, who owns the small business complex
 where the shattered, burning plane came to rest.  There's a lot of
 business out here. This is always very busy."
     The crash forced Fine Air Services Inc. to scrap its 2-day-old
 offering of stock to the public Friday.  The decision means all
 trades of the stock will be canceled and investors who bought shares
 will be reimbursed. After the crash, the stock fell $1.37 1/2 to
 $14.50, a drop of 9 percent for the day and off 15 percent from its
 peak.
     Investigators sent flight recorders to the Washington headquar-
 ters of the National Transportation Safety Board, which is consid-
 ering mechanical problems, pilot error or shifting cargo as
 potential causes.
     This morning, NTSB spokesman Robert Benzon said the recorders
 were yielding good information that was being analyzed.
     Investigators had conflicting reports about the jet's load,
 which may have been too heavy or shifted and made the plane diffi-
 cult to control, Benzon said.
     NTSB Chairman Jim Hall said at midday that investigators were
 "looking at engine maintenance records, structures, human perfor-
 mance, witnesses, aircraft performance. They have more work to do."
 Investigators will search and photograph the crash site virtually
 inch by inch.
     Flight 101 was carrying 80,000 pounds of denim pieces to the
 Dominican Republic.
     Kathy Petrosky said her stepson, 26-year-old First Officer
 Steven Petrosky, had been with Fine Air since 1994 and was working
 toward a license to pilot passenger planes.
     "It's very sad," she told WPLG. "The only consolation is that
 he was doing what he loves."
     The television station identified the two other confirmed dead
 as Capt. Pat Thompson and Flight Engineer Glen Millington. The
 fourth, a missing man, was not identified; he was described as an
 employee of the company shipping the cargo.
--- DB 1.39/004487
---------------