Fireboat Docked in Tribeca Holds Harrowing, Heroic Stories of Survival

On Sept. 11, 2001, the fireboat John D. McKean arrives in New Jersey with its rescued evacuees. Behind them, the north World Trade Center tower has just collapsed.  Photo: Ron Jeffers

The FDNY Fireboat John D. McKean is back Downtown. Lovingly restored and gleaming red and white, the 65-year-old former Marine 1 vessel is docked at Pier 25 this summer, just blocks from where its crew helped rescue hundreds of desperate local residents and workers fleeing the horror of 9/11. It then returned to pump river water to the smoldering pile. 

The 129-foot John D. McKean, named for a FDNY marine engineer mortally burned in a 1953 steam-pipe explosion, was among a flotilla of boats that ferried the wounded and other evacuees to safety that day. Now owned and operated by the non-profit Fireboat McKean Preservation Project, it is being planned as a museum ship that will welcome visitors onboard before its departure in October. The boat still awaits a second gangway to make that possible.

Reconditioned with thousands of hours of volunteer help, the Fireboat McKean’s preservationists are seeking National Historic Landmark status for the boat, along with its planned life as a floating museum.

“We gotta get people on this boat. People love its story, and love looking at it and taking photographs,” said David Rocco, a volunteer with the Project. “It’s an important story, with a lot of history and connections to the city.” 

The story is not only about 9/11 but also the boat’s lifesaving role in the “Miracle on the Hudson,” when US Airways Flight 1549 made its emergency landing in the river. On that 18-degree day in January 2009, the McKean crew helped rescue passengers, and tow the plane to shallower water where it couldn’t sink. And then there was the massive Staten Island Ferry Terminal blaze it battled in 1991. But it’s the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that makes the McKean’s stay in Tribeca especially meaningful these days. 

Soon after the attacks, Tom Sullivan, a firefighter on the McKean, who is now retired, wrote his recollections of the events of 9/11. He shared those unpublished, eight hand-written pages with the Trib. Following are excerpts from his story.

Pilot [Jim] Campinelli nosed the boat into the bulkhead [outside north cove Marina] and we secured a bow line as we tied up. I noticed injured civilians coming towards us. (Burns, fractures, lacerations.) Capt. [Ed] Metcalf said he was going to report into the command post, and to get the boat ready to pump. At this time, Fireman [Billy] Gillman and I got our first aid equipment and assisted the worst of the injured. It was a man sitting on a bench looking at us dazed and confused. Burns on his head, face, forearms and hands. We tended to his burns. Gave him oxygen. As more people started to flee we were assisted by civilians.

Soon the crew saw the south tower struck and erupt in a ball of flames.

We knew it was terrorism. The mass exodus of people got worse, we were concerned of a chemical attack so we told hundreds of people to start walking north (upwind) as far as they could.

Sullivan had walked two or three blocks towards the World Trade Center in search of the closest hose connection when he heard a rumble and saw a thick grey cloud rolling towards him as the north tower collapsed. Pushed to the ground by the concussive force of the pancaking tower, and finding himself in dust-filled darkness, he struggled to find his way back to the river, rubble raining down on his head and back.

As I crawled west I saw a flashlight about 3’ off the ground. I reached for the light and soon realized it was attached to the end of a rifle. It was an NYPD ESU police officer trying to get out as well. I told him I knew that I was walking toward the water, follow me. We walked arm and arm and made it back to the water, thank God.

I could see the bow of the John McKean, and many people on the decks, standing, lying in pain, some motionless. I thought the boat was going to leave without me. When. I jumped onto the boat I saw about 100-125 people, there was a lot of commotion up on the bow. I couldn’t see too well but I became aware that there was a woman in the water off our starboard bow between the boat and the bulkhead. [She had tried to jump onto the boat and missed.] The crew had dropped the Jacob’s ladder down to her but it was a little short. They were holding the end with their hands. I found a piece of line and managed to tie it off to the bow monitor. Then I leaned over the sides with the rest of the brothers. We tried to reach the woman but couldn’t. She was hanging on to the last step, ready to give up. Just then I saw Gulmar Parga and Greg Woods swim up (no life jackets) and grab the woman around the waist. Holding her as she was clinging to life. When they did this she was able to get two hands on the step. Then Greg dove below her and lifted her up even further. Now she had her feet on the stoop, one or two more steps and we were able to lift her aboard. We got her in the boat and she collapsed on deck. But alive. Then we helped Greg in. 

Civilians were still climbing aboard. There were about 4-5 mothers with infants wrapped up like little peanuts. We took them below and laid them in the bunks. Also there were elderly, handicapped, dogs, people of all shapes and sizes laying in the cabins and on deck.

When the rush of civilians slowed, the crew left for New Jersey and managed, with difficulty, to tie up at a dock. With a chainsaw, Sullivan and Parga cut through a chain link fence and a wooden barricade so that help could get through. Able-bodied civilians assisted in removing the wounded. 

Returning to Manhattan, the McKean docked at Albany Street. Hydrants were out of commission so river water supplied by the McKean was critical. With more than a dozen hose lines stretched, the fireboat pumped river water for the next week to fire engines that in turn boosted the pressure needed to fight the flames of the burning pile of World Trade Center rubble.

“The key to our efforts that morning was teamwork,” Sullivan wrote. “I am proud to have been part of that team.”

A firefighter's story. ‘That boat was responsible for keeping us alive.’

“We thought we were going to die,” recalled Billy Ryan, now a lieutenant with FDNY’s Rescue 1 and one of the relatively few firefighters from the 9/11 rescue effort still on the job. Trapped amid the heat and blinding smoke of the pile, Ryan is certain that the hoses stretched from the John D, McKean saved his life and the men with him.

Arriving from Queens after the second tower had collapsed, Ryan and a crew of three or four others began searching for survivors, “not knowing the magnitude, not knowing who was alive, who was dead. There was no real command structure,” Ryan told the Trib in a phone interview. 

“We found some sporadic pieces of people,” he added, “but nothing…”

Somewhere near the sphere, exhausted and “superheated,” the men searched for a way out but “we were kind of out of options and it was getting worse. You could feel the heat from the I-beams through your boots at that point. We tried to contact anybody that could give us a little direction.” Finally, reaching a captain, the men were told there was a hose coming off the fireboat. They managed to find their way towards it.

“I remember hearing the hose before we saw it,” Ryan said. “I remember hearing the water. You could hear the line operating. We pretty much went towards the hose and stuck our head in the water. It was dirty Hudson River salt water but nevertheless it was a welcome thing.” And it was the hose gave the men a path to West Street, and safety.

“If that hose didn’t get stretched in we would not have survived,” Ryan said. “The water from that boat was responsible for keeping us alive.”

For information on volunteer opportunities or to make a tax-deductible contribution, go here. Or email info@fireboatmckean.org.