Calling All Boats: The Fireboats of 9/11

We continue with our American stories and with the story about nine Dr. Mike McGee is the author of all available boats which is about Manhattan's trains and bridges shutting down 9/11 and the heroic evacuation of 300,000 people of the island by boats that happen to be in the area was a larger evacuation than Dunkirk. It was executed by a wide variety of boats answer the call for help from pleasure boats to tugboats today. Mike tells us about the fire department of New York's buyer. Boats bravely serve that one of them was John J. Harvey, which had been decommissioned. It was in 1931 the fastest, most powerful fire boat in the world could pump 18,000 gallons a minute, which was just unheard of at the time it was named after John Jay Harvey who had died in a fire on the boat, but the interesting thing about it is at the time of 9/11, it was completely decommissioned, but it was functional and the guy who actually was in charge of the John Jay Harvey was a architectural preservationist who had gotten interested in saving the John Jay Harvey, so this boat which is about 130 feet long, was formally preserved and saved. Beginning in 1999 in Huntley guilt was the guy who raise the funds and coordinated it, and then he became the captain. He was aided by a former truck mechanic whose name was Tim ivory who became the chief engineer for the boat and he just got a kick out of you know keeping this thing functioning to mechanical wonder. And then there was 1/3 person named Jessica DeLong who happened to be from Massachusetts and was a maritime historian who had gotten interested in the boat became one of the crewmembers for so at the time of the attack, Huntley Gill was asleep in his Manhattan apartment, Tim ivory, who lived on a houseboat in a marina in New Jersey on the New Jersey side was having breakfast at a diner and Jessica in the long was riding a freelance article in her Brooklyn flat within hours the three of them were on the boat and the boat was on the Hudson heading South to the disaster and the first thing they did when they arrived there was to over a loudspeaker address the crowd that had gathered to be evacuated in the most panicky people and those who were injured in the falling of the towers immediately obviously tried to get off the south side of the island and they were all gathered there so at Pier 63 on the Hudson River where the boat originated, headed south and the first thing it did was use a loudspeaker to tell people anybody want to go uptown in the hundred 50 people boarded the fire boat and they took them uptown.

Then they got a call by the time they reached uptown to discharge these hundred 50 people to got a call to rush back because the firetrucks had already run out of water and they needed this retired John Jay Harvey to pump 18,000 gallons of water a minute to fill the trucks that were all out of order so that's what they did and they stayed in action down there for four days now. One of the boats that was there as well with the John the McCain fireball that fire boat was actually in-service at the time and on it. It was a newer boat. It wasn't that brand-new. It had been commissioned in 1952. Again, named after a firefighter 1953 actually led lost his life in a steam explosion on the boat the captain know Ed Metcalf. This was only his second day as captain of that boat, so he had just arrived and the second day of his command. He gets this call to come down immediately to the seawall and Liberty Street. In fact, this was right after the first plane and hit the second plane had not yet hit, they were down there within about five minutes and Metcalf got off the boat to go to the command center to see what the fire department wanted him to do next. He subsequently was lost in the in the turmoil and the and the collapse of the second building after the second plane hit, which they also all you know and that's that's another part of the story you know anyone who witness those attacks, or anyone who with all of the citizens covered in inches of dust and debris slowly walking either north out of Manhattan org or south to try to be evacuated by boat. Anyone who witness those images has never really forgotten those images and when Ed Metcalf didn't come back immediately. One of his crew members Tom Sullivan went to try to find out where he was and Tom ended up in some of the wreckage of the second building collapsing and nearly lost his life as well.

But in any case, what happened was that this boat, the John the McCain which is 130 feet long. It played a major role in the evacuation and it was not designed obviously to transport people. In fact, these boats the way they are designed they need a gangplank of about 12 feet to reach the shoreline and the shorelines down there were never designed for multiple purposes it either. Any one of the things that we learn from this event is that that New York Harbor area was not well designed for disaster. You know the people who run these boats they talk about the commercial uses in bringing in liners and and shipping containers over on the New Jersey side, but in general it isn't a very good edge between the water in the land for boarding human being not designed for that at all.

So the fact that they were able to move safely somewhere between 350,000 and 500,000 people off that island in a short period of time is nothing short of a miracle and when they moved the John McCain fire boat and started using it. People were panic the towers and just collapsed. People thought that the entire southern tip of Manhattan was going to blow up. They didn't know what was coming next and they were panicked and you had not simply Wall Street or is covered in dust. But you had babies and nannies and civilians who lived in the buildings around this area, all trying to get off the island and the John the McCain fire boat really ran into a lot of challenges in terms of children. Their deck was about 8 foot down from the loading chores and they were literally throwing some of the babies to the open arms of these firefighters on the boat and then the babies were taken down and for babies to a cot were were placed in the firemen were were taking care of the babies as they were loading the nannies in one case a lady who was panicked actually jumped in the water and got trapped between the boat and the shore and the firefighters had to actually jump into the water and save them by throwing a a plank ladder down and goosing them up. One firefighter had to dive under the water to push and exhausted lady onto the ladder. So this is a very chaotic situation and so for the boat captains were not used to doing this kind of work to remain calm and to as much as possible protect the safety of people who were inclined to do anything at that moment to get off the island. One of the common features of almost everyone that we interviewed was that when the boats were moving away from the island and looking back you could see initially the twin towers on fire and then they all witnessed their collapse and then they were just gone. The thing that was most in common. In every story was the extreme quietness on the boat itself that was nothing like they had ever experienced. The Solomon is. Everyone was deep inside themselves and he is right about the silence with the silence in New York and also in Washington DC know that it was the quietest time in American history with Tricia.

Special thanks to Monty Montgomery and Alex Cortez for the work Dr. Mike McGee, author of all available boats are 9/11 special here on our American story