When the words failed him, Mike Bednar of Lake Ronkonkoma drew pictures, sketching out what was in his mind's eye regarding the last moments of TWA Flight 800.

Now he just hopes they help.

An FBI agent picks up eyewitnesses who saw Wednesday night's explosion. (Newsday / Thomas James Hurst)

FBI investigators Friday issued an appeal to anyone who witnessed the crash to come forward, and Bednar hopes he can offer them something useful.

"I figure the more stories they get that match up as the same, the better chance they have of going in the right direction," Bednar said.

Bednar was surfing off Smith Point Park with two friends on Wednesday evening when the speck of light arcing gently to earth caught his eye. He watched the glint grow to a ball of flame and fall toward the ocean.

"I've heard one hundred reports probably on the news of people calling in and saying what they saw, but there were only five or ten people I heard say in the exact detail what I had seen," Bednar said.

Now, he says, "I've been going over in my head what I saw. I'm not really listening to them."

Sven Faret, 46, of Plainview, who witnessed the crash while flying his plane, was interviewed by the FBI Thursday morning after agents tracked him down as he was being wisked by limousine to an interview on the "Today" show. He later called the FBI when he remembered a detail he had overlooked. "I saw a little pin flash on the ground. Didn't think twice about it. Just a very casual thing," he said.

Jason Fontana, a summer cook at John Scott's Raw Bar in Westhampton Beach, said two FBI agents interviewed him at the restaurant Thursday night and asked him simply to describe what he saw. "It almost looked like a sunset setting on the wrong side," a big orange flame on the water with white smoke billowing out of it, said Fontana, a Waldwick, N.J., resident living in Hampton Bays this summer.

The agents also asked Fontana -- who just graduated from Siena College in Albany and will attend Yale Medical School this fall -- about his background.

It was the only other question they asked him.