How did I not know about Boatlift? (trigger warning: 9/11 post)

[neadods]

How did I not know for 13 years about the 9/11 boatlift? (Youtube link)

I knew about the people walking out over the bridges; a fandom friend's mother got out that way. I knew about the firefighters and doctors and EMTs walking in over the bridges because that was the only way in and they Had. To. Help

Comments

[spiffikins]

that's awesome - I didn't know about that either!

Thanks for sharing!

[redpanda13]

Wow-- half again as many people evacuated as at Dunkirk, and in 9 hours rather than 9 days, and I'd never heard about it.

Thanks for the link. That's a great short film (about 12 minutes).

[neadods]

I've started to feel an obscure need to defend Dunkirk's time because they were sailing into a hot warzone.

But it's a shame, a terrible shame, that it's taken this long for this history to become more widely known. It's an incredible film, and if Facebook does nothing else in this world, it made me aware of that.

[themis1]

It's amazing how people step up when the need is there.

(The comparison with Dunkirk isn't really fair, though, since those rescuees were surrounded by the German army.)

[neadods]

True. Of the many advantages the 9/11 boatmen had (better technology, faster communications) most important was nobody was shooting at or shelling them!

[themis1]

Actually for reasons nobody's ever managed to figure, Hitler didn't outright attack the people waiting for the boats at Dunkirk - but it was still the middle of a war zone with the possibility of that happening. Some interesting facts here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/02_february/03/dunkirk_facts_figures.shtml

This shouldn't take away from the actions of the New York boatmen - they were still going in to something where they didn't necessarily know what was happening, just that they were needed - but the two events were quite different. Equally awful, but quite different.

[neadods]

A very interesting link, thank you!

The parallels between Boatlift and Dunkirk aren't really coming from the underlying situation, though. They're coming from the fact that every civilian with a boat rushed to help in both cases and that is not a common thing.

[bentleywg]

I remember reading about it at the time, but I didn't realize it was that big. Wow.