Hero Divers' Tale Of Eerie Swim Through
US Airways Jetliner Crashed In The Hudson
NY Daily News 1/16/09
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As the last of Flight 1549's shivering passengers were hoisted into boats, police and fire divers sloshed into the jet's murky carcass to make sure everyone had got out alive.
They swam through a dimly lit nether world of floating luggage and clothes, searching every aisle and row in a detailed, desperate search.
"We had no idea how many victims there were," Firefighter Michael Povolny said. "To be in a plane half-submerged in the Hudson River, yeah, it was a little eerie."
Povolny and his Ladder 21 colleague Brian McLaughlin found no one in the front. NYPD Emergency Service Unit detectives John McKenna and Jim Coll searched from the back and came up empty, too.
"Looking back, I guess it was bizarre," Coll said. "At the time, though, we didn't focus on how strange it was."
It was an astonishing testament to a rescue effort that started just moments after the plane came to rest, as ferry crews raced to drop rope ladders to shivering
passengers.
Vincent Lucante, captain of NY Waterway's Yogi Berra ferry, said crew members reached into a life raft to grab two young children, then rushed them to a warm deck.
"It was beautiful. They were nice and calm, and then they started to cry, which was the best sound that we could hear," said Lucante, who has two daughters, 9 and 11. "They just wanted warmth. They were shivering."
While some passengers barely got their feet wet, others fell into the icy river and quickly turned desperate.
"Please don't let me die! Please don't let me go in the water!" a disoriented woman screamed to NYPD Detectives Robert Rodriguez and Michael Dulaney, who dropped from a helicopter to save her.
Mayor Bloomberg and top city officials honored dozens of rescuers in City Hall Friday.
"It was too good to be true - the perfect landing, a phenomenal response, the rescue of every single person," the mayor said.
"This is the story of heroes. It's something straight out of a movie script, but if it had been a movie, people probably wouldn't have believed it."
With Alison Gendar, Joe Kemp and Edgar Sandoval
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