"My God, We Are Under Attack"

U.S. Coast Guard Activities New York: Eyewitness to War

By JAMES McGRANACHAN

James McGranachan, the public affairs officer of Coast Guard Activities New York (ActNY), was on the first Staten Island Ferry transporting emergency personnel to Manhattan before the second tower of the World Trade Center collapsed on 11 September 2001.

The multimission nature of the Coast Guard, the broad security and safety authorities of its captains of the port, and its unique characteristics as the only federal service with both national-defense responsibilities and law-enforcement authority have allowed the service to act quickly and decisively to increase the security of U.S. ports and the nation's maritime-transportation infrastructure in the days, weeks, and months following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. But it was on that new "date that will live in infamy" that the gallant young men and women of today's Coast Guard truly proved their mettle. Following are a few of their stories.

Boatswain's Mate 2nd Class Jason Moberly was the officer of the day at Coast Guard Station New York on the morning of 9/11. From his office on the second deck of the station, he noticed smoke billowing in southern Manhattan. Going downstairs to get a pair of binoculars, he saw his commanding officer, Lt. Kenneth Moser, and two 1st-class boatswain's mates outside the front door. He told them about the smoke, and all four walked around the side of the building. By then, binoculars were not necessary. They saw flames. All knew that the World Trade Center (WTC) was on fire. Moser immediately ordered Moberly to launch two rigid-hull inflatable boats and a 41-foot utility boat. Not knowing at the time that there had been a terrorist attack, their original mission was to provide emergency assistance and secure the area around the WTC from curious boaters.

As their crafts moved across the harbor at high speed, the three crews' thoughts were focused on how they could assist people who had been harmed in what they still assumed was a terrible accident. Midway across New York's Upper Bay, they looked up just as a giant Boeing 767 roared directly overhead. It was heading toward lower Manhattan. At that instant, the boat crews had no doubt about what they were witnessing.

The Coast Guard's Vessel Traffic Services (VTS) center for New York harbor--headquartered at Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island--received radio calls from vessels in the harbor that there had been a "major incident." Capt. Frank Peterson, captain of the Staten Island Ferry American Legion, en route from Staten Island to Manhattan, reported originally that a helicopter had exploded over Battery Park. Within 10 seconds, he changed the report to confirm that a plane had crashed into one of the WTC towers. As Peterson reached Manhattan, the unbelievable occurred. The first tower collapsed upon itself.

Shock and Horror

Boatswain's Mate 1st Class Robin Shipley, at the helm of a Station New York rigid-hull inflatable, took up station at the mouth of the East River between Governors Island and Manhattan's Battery Park. "We understood that a Cessna had accidentally collided into a tower of the WTC," Shipley said. "Shortly after our arrival on-scene we saw a large commercial jetliner approaching from Staten Island at a very low altitude.

"It was hard to believe what we were seeing," she continued, "but it took only fractions of a moment to realize what we were about to see. The plane veered to our right, crossed Governors Island, turned left--crossing over our boat--and turned into a vertical position as it flew into the tower." The reaction of her three-man crew was, "My God, we are under attack."

Shortly after the second plane struck its target, the aviation unit of the New York Police Department (NYPD) advised Coast Guard Operations at ActNY that the second tower might collapse into the harbor. If it did, the resulting wave would jeopardize all emergency vessels in the waters off Manhattan. NYPD officials said it would be best for all vessels to move back from the crash site, position their bows toward the WTC, and ride out whatever might come their way.

Another problem immediately apparent was that the large communications tower at the top of WTC One served many customers--including the Coast Guard and other emergency services.

Chief Boatswain's Mate James Todd, officer in charge of the 65-foot small harbor tug USCGC Hawser, was at his homeport in Bayonne, N.J. Although he was not scheduled to be underway on 9/11, he was on the tug while the disaster was unfolding and knew that he and his vessel would be needed. Because some members of his crew were off duty, he crossed the pier to the office of the Aids-to-Navigation Team and enlisted the help of two volunteers to round out his crew. The Hawser was underway within minutes. After arriving off the tip of Manhattan, Todd assumed the role of on-scene-commander until the 110-foot patrol boat USCGC Adak arrived an hour later.

While scores of boats and small craft were moving toward lower Manhattan, the Coast Guard's VTS center for New York harbor shifted into high gear. Cdr. Daniel Ronan, chief of the center's Waterways Management Division, was told there was "a lot of smoke" coming from Manhattan. He arrived at the VTS site within moments. Using radio transmissions from vessels in the harbor and the center's own surveillance cameras, he quickly evaluated the situation. "We saw the second plane hit the South Tower," he said. "There was a mood of disbelief and anger. Every person in the room knew that this was not an accident--and that it was time to go into emergency mode.

"After the collapse of the first tower," he continued, "we expected the beginning of a mass evacuation. Because of the police report that the second tower may come down into the harbor, we ordered our boats to stand back and prepare for a massive waterborne evacuation. The police department warned us that the city's bridges and tunnels were closed, that the city's subways were either demolished or closed, and that tens of thousands of people were heading for the water."

Ronan made several important and immediate decisions. "We had a report of two more hijacked commercial aircraft and were not sure what else to expect," he commented. He deployed a Coast Guard crew to a Sandy Hook Pilot Boat to head offshore into the main shipping channel into New York Harbor for possible ship boardings. He also closed New York Harbor--except for the fleet of more than 100 public and private tugs, and tour boats, that he had commissioned to evacuate, by water, as many as five million people.

"Frantic and Confused"

As burning debris from the WTC towers and other buildings thundered into the city's downtown streets, Coast Guard personnel calmed and directed masses of frantic and confused people to evacuation points that had been hastily established at the water's edge. "The number one priority at the moment was the evacuation," Ronan said, "but we also had to bring in as many Coast Guard vessels as possible to protect the harbor's infrastructure."

The Coast Guard's daunting rescue challenge soon became even more complicated. When the Trade Center's second tower collapsed, it carried with it the tall antenna on the top of the building that was used to transmit a wide range of communication signals for television stations, the telephone company, and the Coast Guard. All phones at ActNY, and at the Coast Guard's Battery Park Building only blocks from Ground Zero, went out when the second tower collapsed. All communications after that were through VHF radio and cell phones.

Ronan had an additional worry--one of a personal nature. His three teenage children were in school on Staten Island when they learned of the WTC catastrophe. They knew that their father had a meeting scheduled in Manhattan that morning. They did not know where their father was, but Ronan's children did know that he spent a great deal of time at the Port Authority offices in the WTC. When the phones went dead, communication was impossible. Once service was restored, Ronan arranged for his brother-in-law to bring the children to his home and care for them there. In light of what had already happened, Ronan knew that he would not be returning home for perhaps a very long time.

Operation Guarding Liberty was launched almost immediately after the attack. Cdr. David Martin, chief of the ActNY's Administration Division, set up a logistics section to support the more than 1,000 personnel from 95 Coast Guard units throughout the New York area--and other, more distant, locations--who were reporting, as fast as they could and by any means available, to the command to assist in emergency operations. "We had to fulfill the needs of vessel, facilities, and naval engineering logistical support including food services, security, transportation, medical, berthing, supplies, procurement, and force optimization," he said. Later, Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta noted in his Secretary's Unit Award he presented to ActNY that almost all of these numerous and difficult tasks were accomplished within 72 hours. Simultaneously, ActNY began the distribution of humanitarian relief provisions to 5,000 fire, police, and emergency workers.

Going Into Battle

Many Coast Guard personnel were on-scene from the start at what later was called Ground Zero. Coast Guard firefighter Richard Hyland, who has worked at the Governors Island Fire Department for six years, spent seven days at the disaster site searching for survivors--including more than a dozen close personal friends. "We train with the New York City Fire Department all the time," Hyland said. "We all have friends who are not with us any more."

Hyland remembers the chaos the Coast Guard firefighters experienced upon arriving at Battery Park shortly after the attack. "We were taken over by a fireboat from the Brooklyn Navy Yard, then transferred to a Circle Line cruise boat. When people saw us coming, they began to rush the boat--nobody knew if another building was coming down," he said. "We assisted a lot of injured and hysterical people into the boat, while other guys went straight into--well--battle, I guess you could call it.

"It looked like we were on an island when it was snowing," he said. "The breathing was terrible--everyone was choking; everyone was covered in white."

Twelve firefighters from Coast Guard Training Center Cape May, N.J., also joined the search-and-recovery effort. "I was there so many days," said one of the Cape May firefighters. "Between the debris and the smell alone, it was horrible."

The pace of the Coast Guard's emergency response accelerated across all of its activities in the greater New York City area. Within two days, Chief Food Specialist Joseph Dennis, in charge of the ActNY galley, went from serving 150 meals a day to 2,000. "The standing orders on my status board included 200 meals a day to sea, 500 to our ship and the aids-to-navigation team in Bayonne [N.J.], and 50 to the Battery Park Building, where all the restaurants and stores were closed," he said. "Our galley was open 24 hours a day, and my crew handled it, but my proudest moment was when the whole off-duty section showed up on their own when they learned of the attack."

Debris in the harbor kept the Facilities Engineering Division at a full-speed tempo. From Station New York, boat crews from up and down the East Coast were running 41-foot utility boats and rigid-hull inflatable boats, 65-foot and 110-foot cutters, and six raider boats from a Port Security Unit (PSU). By shifting crews, the Coast Guard's cutters and boats were able to remain underway 24 hours a day.

The nonstop operations gave the engineering section at the boat repair facility at Coast Guard Sandy Hook, N.J., an enormous increase in its workload. It was essential to repair debris damage quickly and maintain the crafts' engines, electrical and electronic systems, and communications equipment so the boats could remain on the front line of homeland security in and around the harbor.

The Engineering Division prepared seven tractor-trailers and buses--which, loaded with all of the gear needed to operate a small city, left Fort Eustis, Va., 54 hours after the attack. PSU 305, with 100 personnel and six 25-foot raider boats armed with machineguns, also was quickly rolling toward ActNY. Making quick decisions based on his own, and the unit's, past experience, Cdr. Frank Fiumano, chief of the Facilities Division, said that his people "procured lumber and plywood and set up the wooden platforms and sidewalks for PSU 305 to rapidly set up their tents in a field beside the gym. My guys know Coast Guard operations and began preparing before the word even came out that a PSU was coming."

Master Chief Robert Dugin, a retired New York City fireman, and a member of the unit since it was established in 1994, said he thought that, "... everybody in the unit felt that they were doing their part by contributing in some way to protect the assets and people of New York Harbor. Even though we could not do anything hands-on at the World Trade Center itself ... our work allowed a lot of other people to do their jobs at Ground Zero."

Never Forget

Three sentences from the citation of a Coast Guard Meritorious Service Award, later presented to Lt. Cdr. James Olive, chief of the Surface Management Branch, illustrate the intensity of the Coast Guard's NYAct's operations both during and after 9/11.

"In the first critical hours following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, he set in motion a plan to evacuate more than half a million panicked people from lower Manhattan and provided an unprecedented level of security at high-risk facilities in order to deter further attacks. For the next 45 days he led all surface forces--comprised of over 60 cutters, boats, aircraft, a port security unit, and two tactical law-enforcement teams--in over 20,000 patrol hours, the conduct of more than 1,000 port-security boardings, and the protection of more than 150 key assets within a 40-square-mile area."

The terrible events of one year ago are indelibly etched in the memories of every Coast Guard person who lived through them on what began as a bright, crisp Tuesday in early autumn. It is unlikely that the normalcy of prewar routines will return any time soon. Lives and careers were forever changed as the Coast Guard and all other branches of the nation's armed forces--joined by other federal agencies, state governments, and local communities--were thrust into the war against international terrorism.

As the first anniversary of the 9/11 attack approaches, Moberly, Shipley, Todd, Hyland--all of the men and women of U.S. Coast Guard Activities New York, and those other Coast Guard men and women who joined them in New York Harbor--will reflect on the duties they performed on the day that the United States went to war. As their commander in chief has instructed, they will never forget. They share a quiet resolution to see this first war of the 21st century through to its victorious conclusion--however long that may take. *