FDNY Fireboats and the Largest Water Evacuation in History
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 11 September 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, as Lower Manhattan filled with smoke and chaos on September 11, 2001, escape routes vanished. Bridges and tunnels were shut down, subways halted, and thousands of people were trapped at the edge of the island with no way out. In that moment, the harbor became their only hope. The call went out: “All available boats.” Fireboats, tugboats, ferries, and even private pleasure craft rushed to the seawall. Together, they carried civilians across the Hudson and East Rivers in what became the largest water evacuation in history—greater even than Dunkirk. This is the story of the FDNY fireboats and ordinary mariners who became heroes on one of America’s darkest days.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | What I told people, I was making a podcast about Benghazi. |
| 0:08.5 | Nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why? |
| 0:15.1 | Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies. |
| 0:18.5 | From prologue projects and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco, Benghazi. |
| 0:23.6 | What difference at this point does it make? |
| 0:26.6 | Listen to Fiasco, Benghazi, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:33.6 | You get your podcasts. And we continue with our American stories and with a story about 9-11. |
| 0:50.5 | Dr. Mike McGee is the author of All Available Boats, which is about Manhattan's trains and bridges |
| 0:57.5 | shutting down on 9-11, and the heroic evacuation of 300,000 people off of the island by boats |
| 1:05.1 | that happened to be in the area. It was a larger evacuation than Dunkirk, and it was executed by a wide variety of boats |
| 1:13.0 | that answered the call for help, from pleasure boats to tugboats. |
| 1:17.4 | And today, Mike tells us about the Fire Department of New York's fireboats that bravely served |
| 1:23.8 | that day. |
| 1:26.7 | One of them was the John J. Harvey, which had been decommissioned. |
| 1:31.6 | It was in 1931, the fastest, most powerful fireboat in the world. |
| 1:37.0 | It could pump 18,000 gallons a minute, which was just unheard of at the time. |
| 1:43.0 | It was named after John J. Harvey, |
| 1:46.0 | who had died in a fire on a boat. |
| 1:49.0 | But the interesting thing about it is that |
| 1:52.0 | at the time of 9-11, it was completely decommissioned. |
| 1:58.0 | But it was functional. And the guy who actually was in charge of the John J. Harvey was a architectural |
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