‘We Are Going to Get You Out’ : Rescuers Risked Lives to Save Crash Victims

Inside the partly submerged tail section of the USAir 737 jetliner, seats were crushed like an accordion, luggage was strewn from open overhead compartments and water mixed with jet fuel was steadily rising.

In the stark light of flashlights, firemen Jerry Murtha and Christopher Blackwell tried to reassure the passenger. Her head was still lowered in the crash position between her knees as she sat in her seat, which was pinned against the ceiling. In the seats in front of her were two crushed, dead bodies.

“We are going to get you out,” Murtha, 36, told Ann Crews, who volunteered that she thought her wrist was broken.

Feared Tail Would Sink

The sheared off tail section--precariously perched on an abutment in water 25 feet deep--started to shake. The firemen, fearing it would sink, frantically radioed the control tower at New York’s La Guardia Airport to wave off rescue boats and helicopters that were roiling the water.

After more than 40 harrowing minutes, the 58-year-old grandmother was freed. On Thursday, both firemen visited Crews, who was in good condition at a local hospital.

“These are my guys,” she said with a smile.

Like Crews, many of the 63 passengers and crew of flight 5050 owed their lives to rescuers who overcame monumental problems to pull them from the murky waters of New York’s East River after their plane’s takeoff went wrong Wednesday night.

The jet, which was bound for Charlotte, N. C., from La Guardia Airport, aborted its takeoff and slid down a rain-slicked runway into the river, breaking into three pieces. Two passengers were killed and 49 injured, three critically.

The front section rested above the water on a stanchion holding runway lights. The rear sections were partly submerged in water.

As soon as the plane hit, workers pulled a fire alarm in La Guardia’s control tower--setting off a massive response of ambulances, fire engines, police emergency trucks, launches and Coast Guard helicopters. About 300 firemen and hundreds more policemen, Coast Guardsmen and medical personnel converged in a light rain on Bowery Bay at the end of the runway.

They found chaos.

Some passengers were swimming in the water. Others were clinging to the floating wings, still others had managed to grab on to driftwood or a nearby dock. A strong tide was coming in, spilling water through the partly open rear door of the plane’s tail section.

Lt. Albert Warta Jr., a 16-year Fire Department veteran, raced with other firemen from his hazardous materials unit to the edge of the runway.

“I saw no emergency people in the water,” he said Thursday, a large bandage covering his right eye, which had been badly irritated by spilled jet fuel the night before. “I got a rope, tied it to the pier, slid down the rope into the water.

“We had on our regular uniforms. Three of my people followed me. We swam out. Four stayed on the pier for support. We started seeing what kind of problem we had . . . .

“We got inside the plane. It was very dark and hard to see, and we worked with flashlights. As we swam out, firefighter Kevin Smith and I were directed by people on the wings to an area where they said a woman was trapped.”

A passenger, later identified as Sue Peterson, was trapped partly outside the aircraft. She could not move. Her face rested inches from the water. The tide was coming in, and the tail section rocked in the strong current.

“The plane’s stability was in question,” Warta said. “It was rocking and it was tipping and we were very afraid that, in a few seconds, the plane would go under or the tide would come in and she would drown. She could not move at all.”

Peterson’s right hand was outside the plane. Her neck was bent sharply to one side.

“I could see the woman . . . in her seat, partially out of the plane and partially in the plane. I got to her. I got a foothold somewhere on the fuselage. I said, ‘Hello. We’re here. What’s your name?’ ” said fireman Smith, who had followed Warta into the water.

“She tried to tell me her name, but she was bent over and her voice was muffled, and her head was still inside the plane. She yelled it to me, and I wasn’t sure what she said. But I wanted her to know we were there.

” . . . The water was coming up very close to her face. She was starting to panic, and she felt she was going to drown if we did not get her out of there soon.

“Sue was saying: ‘Get me out of here! Now!’ ”

The firemen did not wait for tools to try to free Peterson.

“We started working with our bare hands and brute strength and started moving things and pushing things, and it took us a while,” Warta said.

” . . . We were a little concerned about the stability of the plane. At any time it could have rolled over and have gone to the bottom and taken us with it.”

While other rescuers struggled to free Peterson, who was reported resting comfortably Thursday in a hospital after a leg operation, Warta swam inside the tail section.

Other policemen and firemen were already there. When they received word that the plane had crashed, members of the Fire Department’s Rescue Three unit had sped across the Triborough Bridge from upper Manhattan. As the big red van, siren wailing, lights flashing, crossed the span, the firemen pulled on their scuba diving gear.

Murtha, a member of the Rescue Three unit, said, “When we arrived at the airport, other divers were in the water. They were working on the middle section. I swam to the tail section. It was dark in the water. I went through the rear door of the tail section. I searched the bathroom and I searched the seats. There were no visible people.

“I started asking: ‘Is there anyone there?’ I got a reply from a woman. She screamed: ‘Help me. Help me.’ ”

It was Crews.

“I gave her psychological first aid,” Murtha said. “I told her I was with the Fire Department and that we were going to get (her) out. I radioed to shore. I said I had a person trapped in the rear section of the plane.”

As he made his way inside the tail, Warta also heard the voice. A companion managed to squeeze a rubber raft into the severed tail, and, with other firemen and policemen, Warta stood in the raft. He reached out his hand to Crews, who squeezed it.

“She said: ‘Please don’t leave me.’ I said: ‘We are not going to leave. We have people working on it.’ ”

The rescuers decided that the only way to free Crews was to cut the legs of her seat free. As the firemen worked with a tool they call the “Jaws of Life”--a hydraulic device that cuts through metal like a giant pair of scissors--they kept up a steady conversation with the trapped passenger to reassure her.

They learned that she had come to New York to visit her brother and that her son was a Marine drill instructor.

“She was very calm. It was like a casual conversation,” Blackwell said. “She said her legs are numb and falling asleep and that her hand was really hurting. It looked like it was starting to get swollen. I am a paramedic. Everything looked intact, except the left hand, which we determined to be broken.

“I kinda tried to keep her attention, make sure she knew we were still there. She said she was going home, she lives in Virginia but was flying into North Carolina, and the closest airport was Charlotte.

“We kept telling her, ‘I know you are getting uncomfortable with this and it is making a lot of noise.’ The jaws make a lot of noise when it cuts through the metal.”

“She was a real trouper. She never panicked.” Murtha said.

After about 40 minutes, Crews was free. Her rescuers placed her in a small rubber raft and transferred her to a Coast Guard vessel.

“She said: ‘I feel so good,” Murtha recalled.

When it was all over, Murtha and Warta stood for a moment on the wing of the plane in the glare of giant floodlights. The two firemen shook hands.