Current Events: Instead my usual complaining about the government, how about well-deserved thanks and accolades.

The plane / helicopter crash tragedy is getting a lot of coverage on Baltimore’s local news.  Perhaps more than some of my friends see.

I was very positively impressed by the job federal, state, and local government agencies and people did and are doing.

Reagan National Airport (aka Washington National, aka DCA) sits in Virginia, right across the Potomac River from DC.  Maryland surrounds DC on the Maryland side of the River.  The Potomac itself is in Maryland.  (Personal Note:  I was 21 when I flew for the 1^st time, heading to Army basic training at Fort Knox.  A little commuter prop plane from Hagerstown to DCA and then an Eastern Airlines jet from DCA to Louisville.)

1^st responders from DC, VA, MD … as well as federal agencies and the military … were on it right away.  It sure didn’t look like there were any coordination issue or turf disputes.  Nothing but mission focus, urgency, and innovation.  They just all got to work looking for survivors in the dark, icy Potomac.  From the Washington Post:

“As hundreds of emergency personnel from all over the metropolitan area converged on National and its surrounding roadways, bridges and riverbanks, a sea of strobe lights bathed the evening in red and blue for miles around …

“… Dispatchers summoned more and more help as the scope of the disaster became clear. Soon more than 300 first responders were at the scene or en route from as far as Baltimore, so many that not enough boats were available for all the rescuers arriving to look for survivors and bodies in the frigid river.

“The Army sent people. So did the Coast Guard, the FBI, Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, the Maryland and Virginia state police, the Maryland Transportation Authority. So did suburban police and fire departments.

“A D.C. police officer and a fire department colleague saw a dinner-cruise yacht at a pier with its lights on … They ran to the pier and banged on the heavy steel gates.

“We need to get on your boat,” one of them said.

“The boat, with room for 150 passengers, had just docked after a river cruise. A janitor unlocked the gates of the pier. The first responders hurriedly told the captain and crew that 60 or more people had been aboard the two doomed aircraft and that some or most of them, alive or not, were out there in the water.

“They needed help.

“Ten minutes later, the yacht was a mile and a half upriver in the area where the wreckage had plummeted down.”

The other thing I note is the professionalism, experience, expertise, and empathy of the NTSB.  I just watched an NTSB press briefing.  Talk about cool under pressure, it was just perfect.  I don’t know what else to say.  Perfect is, well, perfect.

All of these folks get my thanks and highest compliments for their work.