Fifteen years ago
on 9/11 — when New York’s twin towers came down in a cataclysm of
mangled metal and concrete, smoke and ash — the World Trade Center
office workers who escaped the wreckage of the initial attacks fled in
desperation.
Choking in the thick black air, injured and supporting the injured,
dust-covered survivors ran for their lives, all while wondering if
another attack was imminent. But leaving lower Manhattan by familiar
routes proved all but impossible, as subway and train traffic was
immediately shut down and bridges and tunnels were closed.
And yet, within just nine hours, half a million people had been
evacuated from the island of Manhattan thanks to a spontaneous volunteer
effort. The unexpected rescuers? Hundreds of boat operators and their
crews.
“People ran in all directions,” says James Kendra, professor of public policy and administration and director of the Disaster Research Center
(DRC) at the University of Delaware. “Those who ran south were stuck at
the water. But then the boats started coming, and the operation became
so large that it covered New York Harbor.”
How that happened, and what planners can learn from it, is the subject of American Dunkirk: The Waterborne Evacuation of Manhattan on 9/11,
a new book by Kendra and Tricia Wachtendorf, associate professor of
sociology and director of the DRC. The two social scientists arrived in
New York on Sept. 13, 2001, and ended up staying two months as they
conducted interviews and delved into various aspects of the response to
the terrorist attacks. They returned about a year later for follow-up
research.
The marine operation was just part of the complex story of the 9/11
tragedy in which first responders, policy makers and average citizens
all played major roles in the disaster response and recovery. But the
boat evacuation was unique in many respects, and its importance has been
overlooked in numerous accounts of the day’s events, Wachtendorf and
Kendra say.
“It was a fascinating story, and we wanted to tell it,” Wachtendorf
says. “The individual stories of people who decided at that moment to
use their boats to help are compelling, but it’s also interesting to us
as researchers. This was an emergent response — totally unplanned but
remarkably effective.”
This information previously appeared in a UDaily article.
