On Thursday as the operator of Continental Connection Flight 3407, which crashed a week earlier in a Buffalo suburb, defended both its training programs in the face of impending investigation, Binghamton University students and faculty that grew up in the Buffalo area said they were still unsettled by the tragedy that hit their community.

“Growing up, every time a plane would go by, I would think, ‘What if that plane fell in our backyard?’” said Ryan Vaughan, a BU English professor and a native of Clarence Center, N.Y., the town of 1,747 where the Continental Connection turboprop plane crashed.

The plane was about six miles from Buffalo Niagara International Airport, its intended destination. The plane pitched sharply up and down and side to side before smashing into a home in the suburb of Clarence and bursting into flames. All 49 people on board and a man in the house were killed.

According to Ryan Ganzenmuller, a freshman from East Amherst, the noise of planes overhead is common for all in the area.

“They fly right over my house,” he said. “If it had went down four or five minutes later, there’s no telling how close it could’ve been to my house … the planes always fly over that area, always come in the same direction. There was easily five or six planes today in the same flight path.”

Though the crash was three and a half hours away, the effects of the tragedy have been directly felt by the BU community.

Nicole Borner of North Tonawanda, N.Y., a BU women’s soccer recruit in her senior year of high school, lost her father David, 49.

“On behalf of everybody in the Binghamton University athletic department, we’re deeply aggrieved and extend our deepest sympathies to her entire family,” said Director of Athletics Joel Thirer.

“The plane crash was a devastating event that will change the lives of many, including one of our incoming students,” said Cheryl Brown, director of undergraduate admissions. “We extend our condolences to the Borner family and to the families of everyone affected.”

According to University spokeswoman Gail Glover, 142 current undergraduate and graduate students are listed with addresses in Erie County, where Buffalo is located. Rachel Kiely, a senior psychobiology major from East Amherst, worried for her family the night of the crash.

“I found out because it was everyone’s Facebook status,” she said. “It was about two miles from my house so it was pretty scary; I was kind of freaked out. It was two in the morning so I didn’t call my parents, but it scared me.”

Ganzenmuller got a call from a friend who lives in Clarence about 40 minutes after the crash. Others didn’t find out about the crash until the next morning.

Nancy Paul, director of the Career Development Center, grew up in Williamsville, about three miles from the crash, but much of her family lives in Clarence. Paul was going through her morning routine at a local gym when she heard by word of mouth.

“Somebody said, ‘Did you hear about the plane crash?’” Paul said. “You immediately think it was a small, private plane. They said it was in Clarence, and you kind of have that moment, because I didn’t know where in Clarence it was.”

And some, upon hearing the news, were simply in disbelief.

“I just could not believe it,” said Pat Wrobel, who earned two graduate degrees from BU and is the school’s director of development. “I thought it was a bad dream.”

“I turned on CNN; it said Clarence Center across the screen,” Vaughan said. “That’s a big news corporation. I thought, ‘There’s no way it’s actually Clarence Center. It’s probably Amherst.’ Then I looked and I knew the street.”

Vaughan said he grew up a mile from the plane and that a member of his graduating class at Clarence Senior High School was aboard, as was a family friend. Nancy Paul’s sister attended a wake Thursday night and is set to attend a funeral today and a memorial service on Saturday.

“Of course I immediately start calling my family to see if everybody was OK, and then you just start thinking about the people: Who was on that plane?” Paul said. “I’m thinking, you know, I grew up in Buffalo and I still know a lot of people who grew up in Buffalo.”

The one experience that Buffalo natives in the BU community seemed to share in the wake of the tragedy was a sense of unity, despite a separation from their hometowns.

“My area is a very very tight-knit area, very connected community,” Ganzenmuller said. “I feel [the aftermath] even though I’m not there right now.”

“Personally, I wasn’t directly affected, but in a city like Buffalo, everyone is affected in one way or another,” Brandon Connare, a sophomore biology major from Buffalo proper, said. “I went home the day after the crash like I had already planned to, and once home I could immediately tell that everyone in the city was shaken up.”

For Wrobel, the most difficult part of the aftermath has been learning the details of the lives of those who passed away.

“The thing that really hit me was finding out all of the amazing people who were on that flight, just totally amazing individuals,” she said Thursday. “I feel like it’s been a lifetime already of this and it’s not already a week, so I can’t even imagine how these families are coping with this.”

— Information from The Associated Press was used in the report.