Feb. 12, 2019 marks 10 years since the crash of Flight 3407 in Clarence Center, New York, where all 49 passengers and crew on board, as well as one person inside a house, lost their lives.

Most of the victims were from here or were coming to see loved ones who call Western New York home. The families of those who died that night were placed together first at the airport, and later at a hotel the airline reserved for them to get information.

This horrific event will always bind them together in a way they never anticipated, and the violent and very public nature of their loved one's death added a unique trauma to an already horrific situation.

But the unusual nature of their connection was something these families learned to embrace, and when everyone learned exactly what went wrong that icy night, they soon realized this was not an isolated incident. They would seek to do what to others would seem impossible — change a broken system, with regulations that hadn’t been updated in decades — then fight on to get the regulations implemented and to prevent them from being watered down.

To really know the victims the Flight 3407, you have to meet their families. Those men and women are a true reflection of who those victims were. Ten years later, they continue to inspire the community to be better, be stronger, be selfless and live life to the fullest. Through their efforts to make sure their loved ones did not die in vain, they have become living legacies.

Thank you for watching Spectrum News Buffalo's specially-produced series, “Flight 3407: 10 Years Later”, which aired the week leading up to Feb. 12.