NYPD Divers Describe Dramatic Rescue

Swim Flight 1549 Passenger To Safety After "Just Another Jump Out Of The Helicopter"

That's how two New York Police Department divers depict their rescue Thursday of a passenger from US Airways Flight 1549 after the jetliner made an emergency landing in the icy waters of the Hudson River.

Detectives Michael Delaney and Robert Rodriguez are partners on the NYPD Harbor Scuba Team.

"As we got to the scene (in their chopper)," Rodriguez told Early Show co-anchor Julie Chen, " ... we saw that there was an airliner in the water. And at that point, we started to communicate to each other (using) hand signals and shouting in the helicopter to figure out what we were gonna do."

"We usually try to come up with some sort of a game plan while we're on the way to the scene," Delaney explained. "When we looked out of the helicopter, we saw how big the scene was. At that point, when the helicopter started lowering down into a hover, there were a lot of other boats, ferryboats in the area, and the aviation pilots did a great job of putting us in an area where we were out of their way.

"Yet, we saw one victim ... in the water that we wanted to get to right away."

Delaney, Rodriguez noted, is the pair's "lead diver, so he's out first. Then I follow his lead. He had an eyeball on the victim, and he went straight for the victim. And then I exited the aircraft after that and followed him."...[CBS]