Last night, I kept a close ear (I was driving) on the news coverage of Flight 1549 that crash-landed into the Hudson River yesterday. (There’s extensive coverage on LoHud, including this remarkable interview with a young ferry boat captain from Somers who was among the first on the scene.) I was struck by the cautious optimism expressed during a news conference by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York Gov. David Paterson — they wanted to call the incident a miracle, but hedged it repeatedly by saying that it seemed to be one at that point, and it appeared everyone survived. But they were not ready — in the immediate aftermath of a chaotic scene — to make any promises.

It is true, the crash was a miracle and everyone did survive. But, the mayor and governor had reason for caution. I remembered the August day in 1998 that I was working as an assistant metro editor and we heard over the scanner that a boat was sinking in the Hudson off Nyack. This was not an uncommon summer fire call, and not always accurate. But the sound of the call gave it great import, and staff writer Andrea Rubin went to the scene immediately, not waiting for more information. She found out it was, indeed, an urgent and terrible situation. A water taxi taking Sunday trips between Nyack and Tarrytown (without a permit, it was later discovered) had capsized. It was overloaded and after it flipped, it went down fast.

At first, officials expressed relief that though there were injuries from the ferry incident, there appeared to be no deaths. But that turned out to be a mistake, one that a very upset fire chief alerted us to with a tearful call to the newsroom. It ended up that there weren’t 27 people on the boat, as originally believed. (There was not passenger manifest.) Rescuers realized there was a 28th person when they interviewed survivors at Nyack Hospital. The body of Dr. Milton Salkind, an 86-year-old retired dentist, was found under the capsized boat hours after the incident. It was a terrible shock, and everyone was even more upset that people had been led to believe all were safe when this man, out enjoying a Sunday afternoon with friends, died in such a tragic way. That was the scenario Bloomberg and Paterson were obviously trying to avoid.

There were boaters who became heroes in the ferry incident. Michael Hekker, owner of the River Club in Nyack, witnessed the accident, jumped into another pontoon boat docked next to his restaurant and rushed to the scene about a mile out. He helped bring 15 people ashore. Pleasure boaters also rushed to the scene to help ferry passengers.