-9/11 holds a place in the history of New York City
and of our nation as one of the great disasters.
The Holland Tunnel was shut down.
The path was flooded.
The George Washington Bridge was shut down.
-Two attacks there have been in Manhattan.
One plane colliding with one Twin Tower.
18 minutes later -- Oh, my God.
[ People screaming ]
-The only way for people to go to New Jersey is via boat.
The Coast Guard saw the sea of humanity in Battery Park.
And so they went on the VHF and said, "Calling all boats."
-I need as many life vests!
-And all of a sudden, we started seeing sightseeing boats,
catamarans, small boats, tender boats.
The United States Coast Guard estimated
the total people taken off of Manhattan
was 500,000 people.
-Women and children first.
-Which makes it the largest marine evacuation in history.
My name is Peter Johansen.
I was the senior director of ferry operations
for New York Waterway.
I was the person in charge of operations on the day
when 9/11 happened.
♪♪
If I look back at 9/11, it was just azure blue skies.
It was perfect temperature.
I was scheduled to have a meeting with the Coast Guard.
I got on the 8:40 ferry.
We started out into the river.
You're looking straight at Manhattan in all its glory.
There's the Empire State Building straight ahead of you.
I was talking to the captain
and I just happened to look up over my left shoulder
and saw the first plane go past me
and go right into the building.
-Holy shit!
[ Explosion ]
Holy shit!
-And there was a jagged impression
on the side of the building,
like 45 degrees, that it went in.
What was that?
You know, was it navigation error?
How could this happen?
We saw out the other side smoke billowing.
We docked at Pier 11.
As everybody's walking off, there is paper fluttering down.
And it was envelopes and it was memos,
whatever was on somebody's desk,
because the wind was coming directly from the north tower
to where Pier 11 is.
Whenever anything happened around the World Trade Center,
we knew that people, if they couldn't go to the PATH system,
they would come to us.
And so I got on the phone and basically said,
"We're gonna need to start sending more ferries
down to the World Trade Center."
At that time, our ferry fleet was about 24 boats.
We were carrying about 33,000 passengers a day.
We went right to the ferry terminal
at the World Trade Center.
The whole barge is filled with people.
We can carry 150 people on our boat.
And I stayed there.
I went up to the top of the ramp and started doing crowd control.
It was only about five minutes, about 9:03.
I watch as another plane circles around the Statue of Liberty
and heads right for the south tower
and the fireball as it strikes the tower.
[ People screaming ]
That changed everything.
-Terrorists.
-That is. -This is terrorists.
-You're not gonna have two accidents at the same time.
We're under attack.
I have to stick with what I need to do,
and that's safety of people and getting them out of there.
If anybody showed up that was injured in any way,
we made sure we got them to medical attention.
If anybody showed up and they were covered in debris,
they set up a system on the other side
where they would hose them down, decontaminate them.
People lined up to get on those boats,
and the lines stretched northward and southward
for about 20 blocks.
So we continued the evacuation
until the first building came down.
[ People screaming ]
You heard this rumble and you felt the shaking.
All of a sudden, this cloud goes past us.
[ Siren wailing ]
I remember putting some cloth over my mouth and just running.
At this point, they've just shut down all traffic
in and out of the city.
So the only way for people to go to New Jersey is via boat.
The Coast Guard saw the sea of humanity in Battery Park
clamoring to get out of there.
And so they went on the VHF and said, "Calling all boats."
And this was the first time that they had ever done that,
to put out a plea and say, "If you can respond as a mariner,
can you come down here and rescue people?"
And all of a sudden, the tugboats
that are in Staten Island tied up,
the fishing boats that are in Sheepshead Bay
or on the Jersey Shore
took their lines off and headed that way.
We started seeing sightseeing boats, catamarans,
small boats, tender boats.
And you know what We were thrilled to have them.
-We're only taking women and children.
-Okay, folks, you want to keep coming down.
We got more room. We got more room.
-Watch your step. Watch your step.
-There's his life jackets.
-The Coast Guard had people on the ground there
at Battery Park telling them, "You can take 50 people.
You can take 75 people."
And then they would direct them where they're gonna go.
-I can't believe it, man.
I'm fuckin' numb. I can't believe it.
He's got a boatload again.
-Every boat was completely full every run.
People were waiting three, four hours to get on a boat,
and they were happy to do it.
They just kept saying, "Thank you."
As the day went on,
there were some interesting rescues that our people did.
There was a guy who strapped soda bottles to his body
and tried to swim across the Hudson,
and our guys picked him out of the water.
And it was just like, "You're crazy."
A boat would pull in, load up 400 people,
would pull away, go straight across,
would discharge those people, and just coming back and forth.
And we really kept that pace through the night,
even into the wee hours.
The United States Coast Guard,
when they look back at the boat lift
that occurred on 9/11,
they estimate the total people taken off of Manhattan
was 500,000 people,
which makes it the largest marine evacuation in history.
Sometime after midnight, I got in my car,
and I had this urge to go home.
Probably got home at about 2:30 in the morning,
and I went and I kissed each of my children.
They were all sleeping, but my wife had been waiting up for me.
She had been a nervous wreck the whole day.
She appreciated the fact that I came home.
I think of the notices
that people posted for their loved ones.
It was heart-wrenching just because you knew
that most of those people were never coming back.
And some of these people you recognize
because you saw them on the ferries all the time.
My neighbor two doors down was at the top of the north tower,
and he lost his life,
and we lost a number of people from my town.
It was also very personal.
I always considered myself a very healthy person.
2014, it turned out
I had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Stage IV.
It's one of those cancers that are very common amongst people
who were exposed to 9/11.
-[ Coughing ]
Building debris is covered in asbestos.
-We've had a number of people who worked for New York Waterway
who were in that zone for a long time
who have passed away.
It's a sad reality. I'm just very fortunate.
I am in remission for seven years now.
I pride myself on being a native New Yorker.
My parents grew up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn,
and they moved the family out in Long Island,
which is where I grew up,
and it gladdened my heart when I saw the response of New Yorkers
to how they helped each other post-9/11.
Nobody wanted to have this sense of defeatism.
The sooner that we opened things up,
people felt good about that.
The city never ceases to amaze me how it reinvents itself.
It's not surprising to see the success of the boat lift
because throughout your mariner career,
you are trained over and over again
to respond to emergencies.
We had a little saying at the school I went to.
If somebody yelled, "One hand," everybody came running.
Basically one hand for the ship
but one hand for everybody to help.
I'm very proud of the fact
that I was in charge of an operation
that evacuated between 200,000 and 220,000 people
from Manhattan that day.
The fact that I was there is important,
but there's a lot of people that were there with me,
and the crews of our boats, they were heroes.
And I would just like to recognize them
for all that they did that day.
9/11, I was there.
And if I have to take away something from my experience
is that the world could change in an instant.
Be ready to respond and to have a positive impact.
♪♪