"My God, we are under attack"

Sea Power, Sep 2002 by McGranachan, James

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."