"The Lives They Saved is the story in artifacts and oral histories of the 300,000 New Yorkers who were evacuated from Manhattan on 9/11...by boat. It is a story that has not yet been written about or told. It includes hundreds of oral histories and many photographs of this high drama, set against the terrifying backdrop of the day when the Earth stood still, every airport in the U.S. was closed down, and Manhattan was seized by gridlock. For perspective, the boatlift that saved Britain's expeditionary force from the beaches of Dunkirk removed approximately the same number of people: 300,000." -- Amazon.com

September 12, 2001, the day after -- September 10, 2001: the night before -- "There should be a law against working on such a beautiful day.", 7:45 a.m. -- "Lower Manhattan is really MCI (Mass Casualty Incident) City.", 8:30 a.m. -- "We had a view of the World Trade Center.", 8:45 a.m. -- "Eric, look at that! Look how low that plane is.", 8:46 a.m. -- "We noticed smoke coming off the first building.", 8:47 a.m. -- "We are gearing up, psychologically, for a major MCI.", 8:49 a.m. -- "I wanted to surround the lower tip of Manhattan, and the Battery Park area, with fireboats.", 8:54 a.m. -- "There were people running everywhere.", 8:55 a.m. -- "There were bodies strewn all over West Side Highway.", 8:59 a.m. -- "I knew right away we couldn't put the fire out.", 9:00 a.m. -- "With the second plane in, I knew this was no accident.", 9:02 a.m. -- "People were streaming out toward the ferry.", 9:04 a.m. -- "You have to evacuate the injured.", 9:07 a.m. -- "Thousands of people were running toward the water.", 9:09 a.m. -- "Improvise.", 9:12 a.m. -- "That shuts down New York Harbor.", 9:15 a.m. -- "It just looked like too much, high-rise towers, free burning like that.", 9:19 a.m. -- "The tower might come down in the harbor.", 9:21 a.m. -- "That's your evacuation plan - everybody goes south.", 9:41 a.m. -- "All of a sudden, you hear boom, boom, boom.", 10:00 a.m. -- "It looked exactly like an avalanche coming down the street.", 10:02 a.m. -- "People kept coming down the seawall just looking to get away.", 10:12 a.m. -- "We had steel beams all around us.", 10:22 a.m. -- "The group started jumping over the wall into the boat.", 10:24 a.m. -- "[It was] a lot of chaos, a lot of people running around, a lot of screaming, a lot of people asking for help.", 10:26 a.m. -- "The building was a quarter-mile high, and we were way too close.", 10:28 a.m. -- "They give us water and comfort.", 10:35 a.m. -- "The only way out [for the injured] was by boat.", 10:41 a.m. -- "We started putting the women and children on boats to get them over to New Jersey.", 11:00 a.m. -- "There are twenty-seven to thirty tugboats sitting there.", 11:05 a.m. -- "Get the hell out of the city.", 11:10 a.m. -- "Just like the Titanic.", 11:15 a.m. -- "We have no communications with the outside world.", 11:25 a.m. -- "We had to get back in the game.", 11:30 a.m. -- "Everybody seemed to be migrating down toward the water zone.", 11:50 a.m. -- "Every vessel in the harbor was moving.", 11:59 a.m. -- "We know evil.", 12:00 p.m. -- "I felt like I was on a landing craft going into the beach at Normandy.", 12:05 p.m. -- "No one was talking.", Afternoon -- "By 12:30 p.m., we had established a water supply.", Afternoon -- The last ship, Night -- Epilogue: a peanut butter sandwich -- The numbers.