Witness describes narrow escape from falling plane debris (CNN)

[Warpy]

2. Could have been so much worse

There are pins holding the engines to the wings that are designed to shear off and drop the whole engine if it is seriously out of balance to prevent the wing from being destroyed. This looks like cowling but not much more. They'll have to go over the area with a fine toothed comb to find the part that actually failed. The video from inside the plane showed the engine shaking like crazy, but not enough for those pins to shear.

Scary as hell for the pilot, passengers, and people on the ground, in that order. It could have been worse, but you didn't want to be standing under any of what did fall.