Manhattan Crash; Chaos Turns to Order

In the moments after yesterday's plane crash, a typical Manhattan weekday gave way to a scene eerily reminiscent of Sept. 11, with dozens and dozens of police cars, fire engines and ambulances racing to the scene, sirens blaring.

Shortly after the 2:42 p.m. crash, police scanners began crackling with one urgent transmission after another.

But confusion and questions quickly yielded to order and planning, with the city's police and fire departments slipping into a crisis response formulated after the terror attacks and repeated, in varying degrees, a number of times since then.

Unlike the day the Twin Towers were toppled, when cops and firefighters raced to Ground Zero from the outer boroughs and points beyond, those working outside Manhattan yesterday were essentially told to stay put.

"They didn't want us just rushing in," said one Queens police source. "We knew pretty quickly that this wasn't a terrorist attack. The feeling was only a limited number of people needed to be there."

Still, for a brief period, the NYPD was in terror mode.

Cops in body armor toting high-powered weapons stood out on the normally staid Upper East Side. Police quickly put into place a critical response team, mobilizing dozens of cops in the area to keep an eye out for suspicious behavior and to guard landmarks. Scores of extra cops were dispatched into the subway system, long considered the prime terror target.

At the same time Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was conferring with top brass and federal agencies were contacted, with police soon learning that there had not been any airplanes tracked for suspicious activity.

Business leaders across the city, meanwhile, were being filled in on what had happened. "Operation Shield," as it is called, is part of the NYPD's working relationship with corporate New York.

If this had been a terror attack, companies across the city would have reverted to their own response plans to secure their assets and protect their personnel.

Yesterday that was not necessary. It took several hours to reach that point for certain, though police had a good sense that was the case when they found a key piece of evidence outside the East 72nd Street building struck by the plane: the passport belonging to pitcher Cory Lidle.

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