PHILADELPHIA – It has been six months since a devastating plane crash in Northeast Philadelphia.

What they’re saying:

Ellen Don says she can remember the chilling moments a Learjet fell from the sky near her home, along Cottman Avenue near the Roosevelt Mall, six months ago. 

She says her home had damage, but the current aftermath bothers her most.

“It looked like a war zone,” she said. “Neighbors are all gone, boarded windows are still boarded up, they’re still gutting houses and fixing them, it’s never going to be the same.”

Business owner Gregory Ott says he feels lucky.

“If you still look on the street, you can see affects,” he said. “It’s still here.”

The building he owns, directly across from where the plane crashed, will take another month or two to get back up and running. However, his business of 30 years, Ott and Associates Insurance Group, is night and day from how it looked in the days after the crash.

“We did redo the walls, the floors obviously, all the equipment is brand new, the computer systems are all new, the desks are all new,” said Ott. “The foot traffic is picking up again, things are progressively getting the same way back to normal.”

Dig deeper:

The January 31st crash ultimately took eight lives. 

11-year-old pediatric patient Valentina Guzman Murillo and her mother were among six aboard the doomed Learjet, heading to Missouri, when the plane crashed about a minute after taking off. 

Steven Dreuitt, 37, in his car with his wife and son, died from his injuries. In April, his wife, Dominique Goods-Burke, died from her injuries.

“To know that he did everything he could to save his wife, and his son, that’s who Steven was, so he needs to be remembered for the kind, loving, man that he was,” said Elijah Dreuitt, Steven Dreuitt’s uncle.

Elijah says Steven’s son, Ramesses Dreuitt-Vazquez, 9, continues to recover from serious burns at a hospital in Boston. His family is working on a foundation set-up in Steven’s honor, and they are coordinating plans for a caravan to Ramesses to celebrate his 10th birthday in October and cheer him on from outside the hospital.

He says they can feel the prayers coming and ask that they continue.

“I can only imagine the nightmare he’s going through, only nine and then when he has procedures he has to be in a sterile environment for two weeks at a time, not even his mother is with him,” said Dreuitt. “The city that he was born and raised in hasn’t forgotten about him and he’s not alone.”

Back in March, the National Transportation Safety Board released a preliminary report on the crash saying the cockpit voice recorder did not record the accident and had not recorded audio for several years. 

That means investigators may never know what was said on board before the crash.