http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/ny...e.html?_r=1&hp
The police divers found two women, going limp, with minutes to live in the frigid waters between New York and New Jersey.
“They were lethargic,” said one of the divers, Detective Michael Delaney. “They were no help whatsoever. Their extremities were frozen cold.”
He and the other diver, Detective Robert Rodriguez, shoved one of the women aboard a boat with the help of workers on board. Detective Delaney soon helped the other woman aboard as well.
That was the scene in the minutes after US Airways Flight 1549 slid into the Hudson River on Thursday afternoon after the crew reported that the plane had struck a flock of birds shortly after leaving La Guardia Airport.
For a moment after the water landing, it was a picture of eerie calm, the airplane floating on its belly in the center of the river near West 48th Street under a bright sky. A witness in a penthouse apartment called it a perfect landing, as if on cement.
But very soon the water was churned by an ad hoc flotilla of boats and ferries flying the flags of most every city, state and federal agency that works the waters around New York City. They sped toward the slowly sinking jet, a rescue operation complicated by river currents that kept dragging the plane south, as its passengers climbed aboard the wings to await help...
The plane’s pilot walked the aisles of the cabin twice to ensure no one was left behind before he exited...
Vessels from the New York Police and Fire Departments and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey worked with New York Waterway ferries, which sent 14 boats, and the Coast Guard in the rescue. “We sent as many boats as we had,” said Alan Warren of New York Waterway.
The operation was not without improvisation: Four New York police officers commandeered a Circle Line boat picking up tourists and commuters at 42nd Street and hurried to the jet. Two officers stayed on the ferry and tied themselves to two detectives, John McKenna and James Coll, who stepped onto the wing and helped people onto rescue boats, the police said.
The divers were at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn when the call came over the radio of an airplane down.
A pilot at the field, Sgt. Michael Hendrix, 42, said that he imagined it was a small airplane, a routine job.
The pilot and the divers scrambled aboard a helicopter. Air traffic controllers gave them a special route to the Hudson River.
Sergeant Hendrix took the helicopter on a path that passed the Empire State Building and as he passed the skyscraper, he dipped the helicopter down. He saw the jetliner in the water — its tube floating and US Airways spelled out on its side. “I never, in a million years, expected to see US Airways in the Hudson River,” he said...
The helicopter hovered, making sure not to get too close out of concern that the winds from the rotor would push passengers into the water, Sergeant Hendrix said. The divers jumped from the helicopter not far from the water. About five to seven minutes had passed since the 911 call, Sergeant Hendrix said.
The divers saw the women fighting for their lives in the water.
The women were clinging to a ferry but were unable to get aboard as the water quickly numbed them. Detective Delaney entered the water without an air tank, but only his diving suit, mask and snorkel and approached a woman floating in a life vest, he said.
“She was very frantic,” he said. “I just told her to relax and tell me what her name was.” She feared the ferry she was holding onto would run her over, he said.
The second woman had panicked and fallen off a ferry, the divers said. “I swam over to her and helped her in,” Detective Delaney said...
A majority of the patients were in stable condition. “Mild signs of hypothermia,” ...
Honorio Hector Rabanes, a deckhand on the Thomas Keane, a New York Waterway ferry, summed up the just-doing-our-jobs underplaying of the rescue typical of many who spoke of it Thursday night.
“Basically, let me tell you, we were in the right place at the right time,” he said.
But he went on to describe the panic of the passengers: “When we got near them, we heard a lot of yelling. Once they saw us, they were still panicking. We saw two babies on the lifeboat and we tried to get them to pass them to us, but they couldn’t listen. They were just holding on to them tight.”
Very, very fortunate this ditching was not in an isolated area. Without the timely and well done marine rescue, this cold water ditching could have resulted in major losses.