• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

I wanted to get a head count. I knew there were 150 passengers and 5 crew members on the plane. Could we add up those in the rafts and on the wings and see if we’d reach 155?

I asked those on my raft to count: “One, two, three, four…”

I then yelled to a man on the left wing to get a count of people on his wing. He tried, but the process was soon overcome by events, and besides, by this time, people were already being rescued and taken off the wings and rafts. I couldn’t see the raft and the wing on the other side of the airplane or communicate with the people over there. So we never were able to get any kind of count while still on the river.

Our raft remained tethered to the left side of the airplane and Jeff expressed concern that as the plane continued to take on water and ride lower, it might eventually pull the slide raft down and tip people out into the river. He spent several minutes trying to disconnect us from the plane.

“I can’t get it undone!” he said as the plane inched lower in the water. A knife is stored on each raft, but with so many people crammed together, and so much going on, it wasn’t immediately evident to us where the knife was. I knew that deckhands on boats usually carry knives. So I shouted to someone on the raft closer to the ferry to call up for a knife. A folding knife was produced, tossed toward our raft (a woman passenger caught it), and Jeff was able to cut us loose.

WHEN PASSENGERS were later asked how long they waited for the lifeboats to arrive, some estimated it took fifteen minutes or longer. Actually, the first ferry had arrived in under four minutes. Standing in freezing water, after the trauma of a life-threatening emergency, can alter a person’s sense of time. After just a few minutes outside in the water, many of those on the wing were unable to stop shaking. A quick rescue was imperative to minimize hypothermia.

One passenger had jumped into the water and began swimming to the New York side of the river. He soon thought better of it, given the water temperature, and swam back. Other passengers pulled him into our raft, and we saw that he was unable to stop shaking.

One of our passengers was Derek Alter, a first officer for Colgan Air. “Sir, you have to get out of these clothes, and you have to do it now,” Derek told the man who had been in the water. Derek took off his first officer’s uniform shirt, gave it to the man, and then kept his arm around him to keep him warm. (Derek later said that it was his Boy Scout training that helped him know that the man needed to get out of his wet clothes immediately.)

The third vessel to arrive, the NY Waterway ferry Yogi Berra, captained by Vincent LuCante, rescued twenty-four people.

One woman slipped off the wing and into the river, and two other passengers risked falling in themselves as they pulled her back up. When it was time to get her on a ladder, she was unable to move her legs from the cold, and she fell off and had to be helped on again. Others also fell into the water trying to get up the ladders. It was pretty harrowing. Then there was the release of emotions. When passengers finally made it onto the ferries, some of them hugged the deckhands.

One ferry captain was Brittany Catanzaro, just nineteen years old, whose regular job was to transport commuters from Weehawken and Hoboken, New Jersey, to Manhattan. Her ferry, the Thomas Kean, the fourth vessel to arrive, had been pointed away from us when we landed, but she turned it around and headed our way. She and her crew members pulled twenty-six passengers off the wings. All the ferries had to be careful and slow down, especially as they approached those who were standing on the wings. If they threw off too big a wake, passengers could have been knocked into the water. Maneuvering near the aircraft was difficult, especially with the strong current, and required great ship handling to prevent bumping the plane.

An NYPD helicopter arrived, and I watched