This morning's Post had a great article about the Hudson River Ferries and their response.
As Jet Was Ditched, Nearby Ferries Went Into Rescue Mode By Robin Shulman Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 18, 2009; A05 NEW YORK, Jan. 17 -- On Thursday afternoon, Capt. Vince Lombardi was backing his ferry, the Thomas Jefferson, out of Manhattan's Pier 79 in the Hudson River when he noticed a strange-looking boat. No, he realized -- it was a commercial jet. Lombardi quickly moved his crew into high gear for a rescue. "I gave the command to my guys: 'Get the overboard equipment ready. We got to do this fast, or we're not going to have any survivors,' " Lombardi said. No ferry captain expects to encounter a disaster of this magnitude, said Lombardi and a half-dozen other captains who helped all 155 survivors of a US Airways jet that crash-landed in the Hudson River. But they're trained for it. They learn CPR, basic firefighting and hypothermia treatment. Last July, a Circle Line vessel rescued survivors of a helicopter that crashed near the Lincoln Tunnel while on a sightseeing trip. In August, New York Waterway deckhands plucked a struggling swimmer out of the Hudson. In September, New York Water Taxi crew members rescued a 65-year-old man whose kayak capsized during a lesson. In fact, there are so many ferryboats moving thousands of people a day through the congested New York Harbor that they have come to be an efficient and flexible waterborne first-response team. Their response time is almost always less than two minutes, most often less than a minute and a half, said Vince Lucante, a port captain for New York Waterway, Lombardi's company. On Thursday, Coast Guard video showed, the first boat was alongside the jet within three minutes of it hitting the water. "It's not in the day-to-day job description, but it is there," said Michael Starr, another port captain for New York Waterway. "People don't often realize the emergency skills a ferryboat job requires." The pilot of the Charlotte-bound US Airways jet was aware of the ferryboats, his co-pilot told the National Transportation Safety Board on Saturday, and picked a spot that would be close to them, so that his passengers could be rescued before the plane sank. An NTSB member said pilot Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger III told investigators that he landed in the Hudson to avoid "catastrophic consequences" over a populated area. After striking birds, Sullenberger reportedly told investigators, the plane was "too low, too slow" and near too many buildings to attempt an airport landing, the Associated Press reported. Meanwhile, the jet lay in a thickening section of ice as the cold complicated retrieval efforts. Late Saturday, a crane raised the submerged jet on five slings. Ferry captains recalled moving fast to aid the jet's passengers. "I had to keep that boat perfect," said Lombardi, the first to arrive on the scene. He recalled edging up to the Airbus A320, whose passengers had crowded onto rafts and stood on the wings, with a few slipping into the frigid river. "I had to watch with the current and the wind. I knew that . . . people's lives depended on it." For perhaps five minutes, the Thomas Jefferson was alone in the waters near the plane as crewmen helped pull shivering Flight 1549 passengers onto the deck. A video from security cameras on a Manhattan pier show the jet glide into the water and the Thomas Jefferson approach it to help. Back on shore, New York Waterway's safety director, Robert Matticola, had raised the alarm after he saw the plane go down. "Someone yelled, 'Plane!' in my office. I turned around and saw a plane very low over the river and saw it hit the water. The call went out to the docks to send the boats out to the rescue," he said. Capt. Vince Lucante, a port captain, was in his office at a pier in Weehawken, N.J., when he got the call, grabbed Starr and steered the Yogi Berra toward the jet. It was the third ferry to the rescue. "You got to set your emotions aside," Starr said. "Pretend it was like a drill, an exercise, and just work our way through it." "You have to make decisions that affect people, like who to get first," he said. "You kind of have to point to people, bark orders. 'You, first, now swing to the ladder.' When they get stuck you have to encourage them, 'You can do it!' " A mother and her baby were among the first people rescued by the Yogi Berra. "They were so cold, they were shivering," Lucante said. "I heard the baby start to whimper and start to cry, and it was the best sound I could hear." After 10 minutes, Lombardi saw perhaps a dozen other ferries approaching to assist. "All the boats were coming out there, all my fellow brothers and sisters," he said. "I was more relieved than anything when I saw the other boats." Ferries often serve more routine emergencies. A few times a year, people on party boats get drunk and jump overboard, said Andreas Sappok, the general manager of Circle Line. "They don't realize the current is fast and the water is cold." Sometimes a passenger jumps off a boat in a suicide attempt, Sappok said, "but we get them out." Still, ferry companies evacuated more than 100,000 people from Manhattan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. "We were nosing up to the Lower Manhattan esplanade, and people were jumping over the railings onto the bows of boats," said Arthur E. Imperatore Jr., the president of New York Waterway. During the New York City blackout of August 2003, when the Holland and Lincoln tunnels were closed because they had no ventilation fans, New York Waterway evacuated 190,000 people, Imperatore said. "It's certainly been proven a number of times now that this is the cost of doing business here," said Imperatore, who estimated that Thursday's rescue, including the canceled ferry service and diverted boats, cost the company something in the five-figure range. "But the money is secondary in an emergency situation," he said. Most of the ferries took passengers to the Port Imperial terminal in Weehawken. As they came in wet and cold, New York Waterway officials offered them bus-driver uniforms from the firm upstairs. Across the Hudson, the World Yacht company opened its 500-person dinner boat, the Duchess, to serve as a triage center for about two dozen airplane accident survivors. Perhaps if the jet had made its water landing farther from the ferries, the outcome would have been much worse, said Darren Beck, 37, a survivor of Flight 1549. "I was talking with one of the police officers," said Beck. "He said, 'Be glad you landed in the Hudson River, because there are not so many ferries across in the East River.' "That could have been a whole different story." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:285370 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
