On Sept. 11, 2001, then-Lt. Mike Day was piloting a borrowed boat in New York Harbor when the attacks cut off Lower Manhattan in smoke and chaos. Communications were failing. Bridges and tunnels were closed. People lined the waterfront desperately looking for a way out.
Day’s answer was to put out what would become a legendary call over the radio for any mariner who could help. Ferries, tugboats and other civilian vessels answered, joining the Coast Guard in the massive maritime evacuation that moved people off the island.
To mark 9/11 this year, Day, who rose to admiral before retiring at the end of 2025, plans to get together in New York with about 20 others who were there that day. “It’s a mini reunion of sorts,” he said. “So that’ll be a good crowd to spend the 25th anniversary with, I think.”
In a conversation with MyCG, he reflected on what he remembers, what that day says about the Coast Guard, and what today’s workforce can still take from it.
When you think about 9/11 25 years on, what’s the first thing that comes to mind?
It was so long ago, but it seems like yesterday in a lot of ways.
I think for me, really, it’s the Coast Guard, how we were able to step up that day. One of the sayings I’ve used for years is, when things are at their worst, the Coast Guard is at its best. We’re where we need to be and we adapt. And I think that remains true up to the present. If you look at Hurricane Katrina, the fires in Lahaina, the floods last year in Texas, when things were at their worse, men and women in the Coast Guard are at their best.
What is it that enables the Coast Guard to rise to the occasion like that?
I think it’s our culture. It’s a bias for action. We all kind of know, on some level, what it is we’re supposed to do.
And in the case of 9/11, I had no communications. It was just the right thing to do. I mean, how, as a Coast Guardsman, do you leave people flailing in the water in New York Harbor? How do you go by, or see people jumping in, and not do something?
It wasn’t like we had some preplanned, pre-coordinated idea that, hey, we’re going to move all these people. That was the furthest thing from my mind. It was just the immediacy of helping people in need. And I think that gets right to who we are.
Going back to that day, when did you realize you needed to call for more boats?
It was after the second tower collapsed. I could already see some of the small ferries picking people up along the shoreline, and it was working. You could see it. But it was also obvious we were going to need way more people.
We heard the bridges and tunnels were closed, right? So everybody was trapped. And the way the towers fell, the smoke had kind of cut the city in half. Lower Manhattan was just isolated.
And you couldn’t communicate. Cell phones weren’t really operable because so much of that infrastructure ran through the World Trade Center. I couldn’t really communicate back to the Coast Guard either. So yeah, you were kind of on the spot to make a decision.
Did you expect the response you got? That more than 120 boats would come?
No. I didn’t. No. Not at all.
I was just broadcasting into the ether, looking for anyone willing to help.
That’s really what it was. I had no idea it would become what it became, or that that many vessels would respond. It wasn’t pre-coordinated. It wasn’t like we were thinking, okay, we’re going to get half a million people off Manhattan in nine hours. It started on a small scale, and then it just grew.
What should people understand about the civilian mariners who answered the call?
They were essential. I mean, absolutely essential. This was a collective effort.
I think within the professional mariner community, people know the story. The Coast Guard gave an award to the civilian mariners a year later to recognize what they did. I know the Coast Guard Academy talks about it. But more broadly, I’m not sure your average person understands how important those individual mariners were.
It showed what they can do. People stepped forward because people needed help. I think you saw it again when Sully (Capt. Chesley Sullenberger) landed that plane on the Hudson a couple of years later and civilian mariners rescued so many of the passengers. I mean those were probably some of the same guys. They just had a feeling: we can help here. And I think their value was kind of reinforced.
Did you know you were making the right call that day?
No, definitely not. At the time, I didn’t know if I was doing a really good job or a really bad job. I just knew we had to keep going.
And, you know, I was breaking a lot of rules and regulations in doing it. I had no way of asking permission. I guess there’s one scenario, if something had gone bad — if a boat had flipped over, if we’d lost people — it could have gone a very different direction. Once you open that Pandora’s box, it’s hard to control.
So looking back on it now, sure, yeah, it was the right thing to do. But in the moment? No. I definitely did not know how it was going to be received.
With the value of hindsight, is there anything you would have done differently?
Yeah, I would have documented it more. More video, more photos, just more of a record of it.
And operationally, I would have gotten organized faster. I credit Chief Jamie Wilson with helping me figure that out. At first, I had boats going all over the place, crisscrossing, and I was on the radio nonstop directing traffic. It was not a very effective mechanism.
And he came up with a simple but brilliant idea: just put the boats on dedicated routes. Point A to point B. Point C to point D. Once we did that, everything kind of settled down and got a lot more effective. So when a boat would show up, you’d say, “you go from the Battery to the Colgate Clock in New Jersey, or Lower Manhattan to Brooklyn, that’s your route. Just go back and forth and just talk to us if you need us.”
It sounds obvious now, but when you’re in the heat of it, you lose sight of simple things. And for me, that really reinforced the value of listening — especially listening to your chief.
What did that day teach you about leadership?
I definitely learned the importance of command climate and culture.
As a lieutenant, I always felt empowered to do the right thing. I didn’t always feel like I had to ask permission first. And I think if I’d come up in an environment where everything was, don’t do this until you get approval, don’t do that until you get approval, I don’t know that the response that day would have unfolded the same way.
You never know when a crisis is going to happen, right? Maybe with a hurricane you get some warning, but a lot of the time you don’t. You can’t tell somebody in the moment: “Now adapt, now innovate, now be accountable.” You have to have that culture and that climate already there.
That definitely stayed with me the rest of my career.
Are there any lessons that a young Coastie could take away from 9/11 today?
That’s a great question. And yes, I think it’s important for them to understand that even today the Coast Guard is continually evolving to meet the demands of the moment.
When the Exxon Valdez spill happened, we changed a lot in pollution response. After 9/11, we changed a lot in maritime security to meet that evolving threat. If something happened tomorrow, a cyber event, whatever — we’d evolve in that direction too.
One of the values of being a smaller organization is that we can turn on a dime. We don’t have the luxury of staffing every possible scenario and thinking through every possible response. But we do have the ability to adapt quickly. I think that’s one of our real strengths.
I watch now how we’re in San Diego adapting to jet skis to go after smugglers coming across the border. That kind of innovation is a hallmark of the Coast Guard.
So if I were talking to a young Coastie, I’d just say: the mission may evolve, but the expectation doesn’t. Be ready to adapt. Be ready to act. And understand that culture matters before the crisis shows up.
What else do you want people to remember about the boat lift 25 years later?
I think it’s important to keep the story alive.
Not for self-aggrandizement, but because it is, in its own way, an uplifting story inside a national tragedy, right? It’s people helping people in a time of need. And I think that resonates because it goes right back to the core ethos of who we are.
The Coast Guard always has been and will continue to be a service that helps people in times of need. That’s what I come back to.
|
A portrait of RADM Mike Day in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Sept. 10, 2021.
Photo by Daniel Henry.
|
-USCG-