I joined the Fans of Sully Sullenberger Facebook Group
I was outside on Broadway yesterday afternoon when the icy Hudson River embraced a visitor. I was pushing a stroller which held a chattering 4-year-old, maybe a mile and a half from where a catastrophe was unfolding. Nothing in the frigid white-blue light hinted that something dreadful was happening. My husband called. “Hey, sweetie, did you hear that a plane went down in the Hudson?”
My heart constricted: Oh no, what about the passengers? The children? The mothers waiting at home for news of their adult sons and daughters? As soon as I got home, I bolted for the TV and CNN. There were those early pix of people standing on the wing, and the first captions that all passengers seemed to have been rescued.
The Governor spoke well: this was a true miracle. For once, in a world of war and terrorism and accidents and earthquakes and plunging stock markets, life and joy were seized out of the very teeth of calamity. I emailed my friend Geoffrey, who has been a pilot for almost 30 years.
He wrote back, “Next time I fly down the Hudson I’ll probably be looking for airliners descending through my altitude. Seriously though, the fact that there was no loss of life and not even serious injuries means kudos to the pilots and very fast acting rescuers.”
So, yes, I joined the Facebook group. Kudos to Pilot Sullenberger and co-pilot Jeff Skiles. You’re heroes!
This is one of those rare moments when everyone did the right thing: pilot, crew, passengers, ferry boats, Coast Guard, police, controllers, onlookers. Wow!
One of my students thought of something I hadn’t considered. The water was frigid, but if this had happened in the summer, the Hudson would have been crowded with boats.