From Professional Mariner #61Dec/Jan 2002
A shining light in our darkest hour
by Richard O. Aichele
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As a result of the loss of the high command of the city's fire and emergency personnel, there was not much initial direction from city officials, and at an early meeting on Day One with the MCC, city officials basically told the Coast Guard to do whatever they thought was right. "We took that as an empowerment to start bringing supplies over," Day said.
People at Ground Zero, the Manhattan waterfront, nearby New Jersey, Staten Island and Brooklyn waterfronts, and crews on the numerous vessels repeatedly used the phrases "just amazing," "everyone cooperated" and "just doing what it took" to describe maritime community responses. Individuals stepped up and took charge of specific functions, and captains and crews from other companies took their direction. Miller and his launches were a key element in establishing supply lifelines from New Jersey to North Cove that kept the rescue efforts going at Ground Zero. Private maritime operators kept their vessels onsite and available until Friday, Day Four, when federal authorities took over.
The need for drinking water was an early one for the rescuers at Ground Zero. "During Day One, the Transit Police at the Battery needed drinking water and other supplies they could not get," Peterson said. "Glen Miller and I got on the radio and Andy McGovern came back telling us we would get water. All of a sudden, a Poland Springs tractor-trailer showed up and unloaded the whole truckload of bottled water. Later that night, we ran out of ice at the Battery and a couple of boat loads showed up from Jersey City."
With the intense fire-fighting efforts, fuel also quickly became a problem. "When we arrived [at North Cove], there were several fire department fuel brigades with five-gallon water cooler jugs carrying diesel fuel to keep the pumpers running. The fire trucks were all hooked up and couldn't be moved, so the tugs supplied fuel from their tanks," Day said. The fireboats running out of fuel were refueled at first from nearby tugboats. The maritime community logically thinks of moving goods by water. However, some New York City officials appeared to forget momentarily that Manhattan is an island. So when the suggestion was made to bring a fuel barge to the shoreline and run hoses to the equipment, such as fire engines, there was hesitancy plus a protest by a city agency that it could not be done before the proper permits were issued. Logic and reality finally persevered, since everything was running out of fuel.
Emergency workers at the site were engaged in any possible rescue efforts plus fire fighting for the first two days. "Then they realized they needed greater expertise on moving the giant steel pieces at the site," Miller said. On the day of the attack, structural steel ironworkers had been at work across the Hudson River in New Jersey. Many were later transported to work at the WTC site along with steelworkers from other parts of New York City.
Day and night, thousands of rescue workers worked at the WTC site supported by donated equipment, food and clothing brought to Manhattan by the maritime community's lifelines, originating on New Jersey's waterfront piers. Requests for supplies were quickly met. When word went out that drinking water was needed at Ground Zero, supermarkets on the New Jersey side of the river were emptied by individuals buying 10 or 20 bottles and bringing them to the pier staging areas. Similar stories were repeated for other supplies, such as work boots. "A lot of guys were doing burning of the steel, and because there were so many pieces of hot steel, their boots just melted," McGovern said. "We put a request out they needed boots. Next thing, not only were corporations donating truckloads of stuff to the docks, but ordinary people went to the store and bought a dozen pair of boots and got them to us. It was amazing. And the rescue workers would just grab a new pair when they could and kept on working."
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When rescue workers at Ground Zero began to run out of oxygen and acetylene gas, a call was put in to the people on the New Jersey side of the river. "God knows where the new cylinders came from and how they got there, but they showed up in Jersey City and we moved baskets and baskets of the full cylinders across the river. Once we landed them at North Cove, guys onshore literary dragged them the three blocks through the deep rubble," Miller said. That solved one problem but another surfaced. At Ground Zero they did not have the necessary wrenches. Said Miller, "I remember Kenny Peterson walking up and down the Battery taking up a collection of wrenches he knew were on the tugs. Every tugboat just passed over a wrench." Problem solved.
The demand for food, water, clothing, medical products and every possible item needed to supply the people at Ground Zero and on the vessels supporting them was constant. Miller's Launch Service's boats formed the core of the cross-harbor supply chain. Hundreds of volunteers just showed up at both sides of the Hudson River. "They would break down the pallet loads, form human conveyor belts of some 300 people, handing boxes from one person to the other to fill the boats. We would race across to North Cove and there were another couple hundred people to hand-conveyor the supplies off," Miller explained. After a few days, handling the supplies became more automated when, he said, McGovern mentioned the procedure to the Army Corps of Engineers, which then brought in forklifts to move complete pallets of supplies.
The rescue workers also needed clothing. Conroy, at SeaStreak, said an announcement they made over a New Jersey radio station to the local community in New Jersey resulted in "seven 40-foot trailers of supplies from local residents and merchants" that were moved to the city over several days along with relief emergency personnel.
By Day Three, vessel traffic carrying the supplies to North Cove had become so intense that the MCC set up a mini traffic control on the bow of the pilot boat according to Day. "Radio commands were coming too fast and were stepping on everyone too much. Standing on the bow, we started using hand signals and flags for stop and go. That worked great," he said.
The need for maneuverable equipment to transport loads at Ground Zero was passed on to the MCC about Day Three. McGovern said he made a phone call to a friend whose father knew someone at John Deere and that person sent back word: "No problem; you can have what you want." One more direct call between McGovern and John Deere set the needed specifications: special non-puncture tires so they could climb over almost anything at Ground Zero and diesel engines instead of the normal gasoline engines. At two John Deere factories, they moved quickly to fill the MCC's request. Ken Golden at John Deere in Moline, Ill., said the six-wheel Gator utility vehicles were shipped, with 19 sent to New York and 15 to Washington, D.C. A second shipment of 25 vehicles followed later. Some came from John Deere's Williamsburg, Va., factory with another truckload from its Canadian factory in Welland, Ontario. Traffic to New York was cut off, so the Jersey City police arranged a police escort from the bridge over the Delaware River up through New Jersey to the New York City line, where New York City police took over as escorts. The Canadian border had been closed, and when the truck with the John Deere Gators arrived there on Thursday, there was an 18-hour waiting line. McGovern, advised of that problem, said, "I talked to a Customs Officer and I was told to tell the driver to go to the front of the line and he would be taken care of first. That truck was here on Friday."
The Seamen's Church Institute of New York & New Jersey was one of the organizations that immediately set up to distribute relief supplies to rescue workers, including hot food. Its Water Street headquarters were turned into an emergency relief center working around the clock for the 12 days after the disaster. The rescue workers being able to sit down to a hot meal only a few blocks from the devastation was especially important during the intensity of those first four days, according to Debra Wagner, the Institute's director of communications.
By Friday, Day Four, USNS Comfort, a 1,000-bed hospital ship, arrived in New York and docked at Pier 88. The military generally took over that day and began to exercise control over supply operations, and the maritime community's crews and vessels began to return to their normal business. "We were there when needed, but it was time to leave and to leave it to the guys that do it for a living," Miller said.
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"New York Harbor and the New York maritime community has kind of a reputation for being rough, tough around the edges and pushy," Theofield said. "That day it was amazing to see the entire maritime community just pull together and act like one big company. Everybody helped out, cooperated. Guys moved their boats aside to let you in."
During most of Day One, the maritime community's efforts were directed primarily at evacuating workers from Manhattan, especially the injured, plus moving residents of the impacted areas of lower Manhattan to safer areas. For the large numbers of commuters, the harbor craft of all types were their only available transportation to reach their homes across the Hudson River. The flood of vessels and crews touched Manhattan's seawalls and piers from midtown to the Battery, boarding the survivors and moving them across the Hudson River, the East River and New York Bay to safety. How many people were evacuated from Manhattan by the rescue vessels may never be known, but the Coast Guard estimated the number at approximately one million. For the following four days, the mission was to bring in medical personnel, relief workers and the tons of supplies needed in Manhattan at the site. Looking back, Imperatore said, "I shudder to think of what it would have been like without all these vessels and their crews."
For sailors, civilian and military, whose lives are spent on the inland waters and open ocean, unexpected perils are always possible, and their tradition is to help others in need. The immediate and unselfish response of the maritime community around New York Harbor on Sept. 11, and for several days after, stands as irrefutable testimony that the tradition and dedication to help others remains strong in the New York and New Jersey waterfront's maritime community.
Richard O. Aichele (email: rottoa@inforworks.com) is a freelance writer based in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
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