Victims of Flight 1549?
by Donald Devine
Issue 125 - February 4, 2009

The picture of US Airways Flight 1549 passengers on the wings of their airplane slowly sinking into the icy Hudson River on January 15, 2009 was as dramatic as it gets, a scene difficult to forget. The fact that all 155 passengers and crew were rescued was truly miraculous but it also required help from some individuals here below.

The very instant the rescued passengers were being returned to the docks, at an hastily-arranged nationally-televised news conference, Mayor Michael Blumberg, Gov. David Paterson and a host of police, fire and other government top officials were claiming credit for saving the helpless victims. Yes, if they had perished, the usual got’ya media would have blamed the politicians so one understands their taking a bow for a change. But this does not change the fact that the help did not come from the officials. While the implicit point of the media event was, we, the government saved them, in fact, the pols had almost nothing to do with it. The rescued were not even helpless victims.

Even the politicians had to give hesitating credit to pilot Chesley B. Sullenberger III. They faltered because they were media-savvy enough to know that deference to the National Transportation Safety Board “experts” to make his heroics official was what the zeitgeist demanded. Only the national government can speak authoritatively in a crisis, of course. The local officials would not even take it on their own responsibility to say it was geese damage to the engines that caused the crash, even though the pilot had confirmed this. The NTBS experts had not as yet spoken (indeed, they had not as yet left Washington) so the supposed community leaders were timidly mum.

Unlike the pols, the real heroes of the occasion did not speak the language of victimhood. The pilot – with his wonderful Bush-like “III rd” and his out-of-fashion mainline establishment name – was the undisputed number one hero of the day. He did not wait for NTSB or any other instruction but just landed the airplane in the river. Yet, even he was warned professionally to wait for the experts before he spoke to the public. His wife was too non-political and proud to be silenced. She and ordinary people generally knew he was the hero and everyone said so from the very beginning; everyone, that is, except the timorous government officials.

The passengers deserve second billing to the pilot in the non-victim department. Critically, they did not panic (several mentioned that the stewardesses did panic), walking off the plane calmly and, of all things in this modern age, as one survivor politically-incorrectly put it, “allowing women and children first.” What happened to sexual equality? These were not even sophisticated enough to worry about potential discrimination prosecutions for such prohibited behavior. Three – are we allowed to say this – men rescued, respectively, an almost-abandoned infant, an elderly woman normally confined to a wheelchair and a younger woman in heels who slipped off the wing into the cold water (the latter at great risk to himself). They did not need a government order to act. Each did it all on his own, individually.

The final heroes were the boatmen who plucked the passengers and crew from the airplane on the frigid water. None of these worked for the government either, or was any kind of safety expert, although many had rescue training. They worked for private sector ferries plowing the busy river, specifically the Hudson Circle Line and New York Waterways (which is even family owned) and several independent tugboat captains. None waited for orders from higher authority. As the Washington Post reported what happened:

Before police and Coast Guard vessels could respond, the Hudson's commercial flotilla converged on the scene. Ferry, tour boat and tugboat crews tossed life vests to the stranded passengers and began hoisting them up ladders.

It is a good thing the government did not arrive first. The Feds have created a National Incident Management System to credential “first responders” to enter security and emergency sites. Just a few days before the accident – not surprisingly ignored by the public due to its bureaucratically-correct release on Christmas Eve – the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued its proposed “National Incident Management System Guideline for the Credentialing of Personnel” to set rules regarding access to such situations. The rules were proposed to remedy the “processing and being processed” delays in admitting rescuers in the wake of the Katrina hurricane. The document is specifically directed to government officials and secondarily to private organizations to pre-certify their personnel so that onsite government officials will know whom they can “trust” to be admitted efficiently into different emergency situations.

The way they are to do this is through a secure electronic photo identification card compatible with electronic databases that are in contact with appropriate emergency officials. State and local governments are asked to provide badges for their employees who potentially would respond in emergency situations. The rules recognize that the private sector has the most emergency resources and they are given the responsibility of credentialing their own personnel and reporting them to the government. The proposed rules do recognize that “it is most likely not practical” to recognize all who might be called upon to use such identification. This, indeed, is the hole in this bureaucratic nightmare. The rule itself recognizes that it cannot work. All it can do in response is to ask all to be “flexible.” Small firms and voluntary aid groups will never be able to comply, much less random individuals near the site.

Rather than fix the bottlenecks of the Katrina disaster when voluntary aid was already kept out of the area by security officials – including the president’s own brother, who as governor of Florida had attempted to send supplies and medicine – no one will get through the security net without a first responders badge the next time. If the Coast Guard – like FEMA part of the massive Department of Homeland Security – had arrived first and the regulations were in force, would they have admitted the ferry and tug personnel? How long would it have taken? Perhaps the rescues would have been timely, if they were “flexible” enough – that is, if they ignored their own department’s rules. The government saved Flight 1549 only in the sense that its Guidelines were not yet in effect.

This is how government bureaucracy operates. It treats everyone as a victim or client – a dependent or follower - and expects them to fall into line obeying the rules. Reality is not that simple. In fact, the overwhelming majority will not even know the rules. Many who do will not be able to or wish to follow them. The rules themselves defy human nature expecting that everyone is listening and following. America historically has relied on people to respond freely and locally in a manner that made sense to individuals and groups, as its best observer Alexis de Tocqueville described so well. Volunteers have always been the first, largest and most effective responders to emergencies, as the bureaucrats’ own rules recognized. But the rules get in the way, as Katrina proved, the first major outing of FEMA under the control and mission of the DHS.

Mr. Obama called for an “era of responsibility” in his inaugural address but it is clear from the programs in the so-called stimulus bill that he or his party or both cannot break their old ways. But he could make responsibility more than rhetoric if he actually turned responsibility back to individuals from the government in at least one area where he should not be too inhibited politically. The National Incident Credentialing Guidelines present the perfect target. He can even do it administratively, without Congress.

The regulations themselves demonstrate that they cannot work. The rules restrict prompt action in an emergency and stifle the local voluntary activity that must be preeminent even by their own reckoning. The US Airways rescue proves that individuals can meet even severe challenges if potential assistance is free enough of government restrictions and supposed “help” to solve their problems by themselves or with their neighbors. If it is impossible for the president to adopt the principle of responsibility generally at least cutting through this bureaucratic monster is somewhere to start.

Donald Devine, the editor of Conservative Battleline Online, was the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management from 1981 to 1985 and is the director of the Federalist Leadership Center at Bellevue University.