We went to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum on Saturday morning. That was a day that we will never forget…. The memorial and museum are part of the World Trade Center complex, in New York City. They were created for remembering the September 11, 2001, attacks, which killed 2,977 people. The memorial is located at the World Trade Center site, the former locations of the Twin Towers that were destroyed during the September 11 attacks.
We watched a really interesting documentary while we were in the museum, called Boatlift: An Untold Tale of 9/11 Resilience. (Narrated by Tom Hanks.) We had forgotten about the boat crews that responded to help evacuate Manhattan. Many people were unable to leave Lower Manhattan due to the closure of bridges and tunnels and mass transportation. Within minutes of the first plane hitting the first tower, multiple fireboats from the NYC Fire Department rushed to the scene. The United States Coast Guard coordinated a large convoy of merchant ships, tugboats, and ferries to evacuate the stranded and injured victims.
More than 150 different vessels and 600 sailors helped evacuate victims and delivered supplies in the days following the attacks. The mass evacuation of more than 500,000 civilians following the attacks “moved more people from the island than the 1940 evacuation of Allied troops from France.” (Dunkirk)