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From Frank Clynes Oct 2, 2022
Question: Which TV news station was the first to report that US Airways Flight 1549 had made an emergency landing on the Hudson River on Jan. 15, 2009? Answer: WLNE-6 in Providence R.I. I was on my computer in Swansea that day, when "You Have Mail" flashed across the screen. It was from Gayle, a nice lady I had dated some years prior. She asked if I heard anything of a passenger airplane that had crashed in New York. Gayle was currently at home in New Bedford, talking on a cell phone with her brother John Verisimo, an engineer on the ferryboat Aegean, on the Hudson River. Suddenly John interrupted her to say that a plane had just crash-landed off their starboard side. He took a snapshot of it and e-mailed it to her. The ferryboat was turning about to intercept it, and Gayle forwarded the picture to me. The plane was dead in the water in the photo, with no passengers standing on the wings yet. I told her to stand by while I contacted Steve Doer, the new WLNE-6 general manager. He got back to me instantly and asked for John Verisimo's cell phone number. He put reporter Mark Curtis on the phone, while he contacted ABC. I sent him the picture of Flight 1549, and Mark forwarded it to WLNE's Master Control. The ABC assignment desk assured Steve that no plane had crashed in the Hudson. Doer suggested they look out their window. Mark Curtis was already on the phone, interviewing and recording John Verisimo, even as the first inflatable raft was approaching. By luck, Chesley Sullenberg was one of the occupants of the first raft. A funny thing happened as the passengers were being pulled aboard, which was not reported. In seafaring tradition, the women were being pulled up first, the first one being the flight attendants. One attendant stopped abruptly halfway up the ladder, and said that she had left her shoes behind. She was going to go back to get them. Sully was right behind her, and told her what she could do with her shoes. The water temperature was 32° and some passengers' hands were freezing. When she still wouldn't budge, Sully reached up, grabbed the largest part of her anatomy he could find. Sully squeezed as hard as he could, and she went up like a sky rocket. I contacted Gayle in New Bedford and told her to turn on Channel 6. Steve Doer was back on the phone, explaining what was happening at his end. He gave the network John's cell phone number, and now they were interviewing him. ABC broke into the regularly scheduled programming and were now also reporting the story. When the ferryboat arrived at the pier and began unloading passengers, a man in a chauffeur's uniform showed up and said he was told by Mayor Bloomberg to bring the ferryboat crew to the mayor's office for a press conference. The airline crew were picked up by a U.S. Airways vehicle and taken elsewhere. John Verisimo later wrote a book called "Saving Sully." It dwelled mostly on Sully's career as a New Bedford commercial fisherman, and which included another sea rescue he was involved in years earlier. |
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