D.C. firefighter Jeff Lenard had just wrapped up a training in California in January when he learned a regional jet collided with an Army helicopter over the Potomac River, killing all 67 people on board. Unable to immediately respond on the scene, he jumped into the effort in a different way – by using technology.
As rescuers worked to locate crash victims, Lenard and Tim Hutchison, of D.C.’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer, quickly deployed tools to tackle another monumental task: helping divers locate underwater debris and document what they found.
The men came up with an idea for a phone-based app that Hutchison developed within hours of the disaster, one that allowed divers to take images of recovered wreckage, confirm its location in the water and upload the data, which was instantly fed into a database they turned over to investigators.
“We were able to create a common operating picture within the first hours of this incident. That allowed everybody to try to be on the same page,” Lenard said.
As the rescue operation gave way to recovery, D.C. Fire and EMS deployed sonar technology to scan the bottom of the river with sound waves, building detailed maps of the riverbed just off Reagan National Airport. The technology was purchased years ago under a grant program now under nationwide review by the Trump administration.
With the sonar mapping tool, firefighters were able to swiftly deploy divers to retrieve what they found following the collision, cutting what they said could have been a weekslong operation into just days.
“The most important thing is being out there and finding every person who lost their lives in this crash – to bring them home to their family,” Lenard said. “If you have 100 exhausted divers, your searches are not going to be as effective.”
That early effort gave them a picture of what they couldn’t see: an underwater photo album of debris they said showed wreckage as large as 18 feet and as small as a cellphone.
“Seeing personal belongings being pulled up was definitely a moment of pause. It really hit home,” Hutchison said.
The technology was so precise, it may have also recovered parts of the Air Florida plane that crashed into the 14th Street Bridge in 1982, killing more than 70 people. Lenard said D.C. Fire turned over those artifacts to the FBI for examination.
D.C. Fire commissioned the sonar equipment through a federal port security grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency a few years back, never knowing it would be used to help recover loved ones for families in a plane crash.
But now, the program FEMA states is designed to bolster security at ports across the country is under review by the Trump administration, which has placed a freeze on federal spending, including on the Port Security Grant Program.
President Donald Trump has said he wants to eliminate FEMA. It’s unclear what would happen to those dollars.
“It’s people’s lives and livelihoods that are at stake,” said Cary Davis, president and CEO of the American Association of Port Authorities.
How port security funds are used
Davis said the port security program helps protect against increasing threats at the nation’s ports in ways people don’t realize, and that it’s already faced funding shortfalls for years.
“The needs far out outstrip the dollar levels that Congress in recent years has given for seaport security,” Davis said.
In fiscal year 2024, the grant program pledged $90 million in funds to ports and government authorities for maritime security plans. That’s down from $100 million in fiscal years 2021, 2022 and 2023, according to FEMA.
How D.C. Fire used the dollars on sonar technology, as well as night vision optics capabilities, and deployed them on the mid-air disaster response earned notice from top investigators.
Speaking to port leaders at a recent conference, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board praised D.C. Fire’s contribution to her investigation and commended their use of the federal funds.
“That just shows how critical those grants are,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told the I-Team. “Not just for ports, but also for these lifesaving measures and for recovery after a tragedy.”
The I-Team reached out to FEMA to ask about the future of the port security grant program that funded D.C.’s sonar technology.
In a statement, a spokesperson didn’t directly address the program but acknowledged current grantees are in limbo, saying: “FEMA is conducting a careful review of all grant allocations before releasing funds” and as “individual program reviews are completed in the coming days, we will follow up with respective grant recipients.”
D.C.’s first responders, including CJ Isbell, said that, while the funds they received years ago helped create critical technology, it’s the people they used it for who matter most.
“Our entire goal was to bring those family members home,” Isbell said. “Our job was not finished until we had that.”
Reported by Ted Oberg, produced by Katie Leslie, shot and edited by Jeff Piper and Carlos Olazagasti, and edited by Jeff Piper
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