On 13 January 1982, Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the 14th Street Bridge during a snowstorm. That was before the days of Twitter and mobile phones used in the recent plane crash in the Hudson, and radio hams helped. One of the radio hams was Marius Novi (Jean Marius Novi), an interpreter inter alia for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. He helped engineer a phone patch (whatever that means) and volunteered services and equipment over a period of four days. (Communications, PDF)
I waws sorry to hear – rather later – that Marius died aged only 62 of sepsis on 19 June 2007 in Georgetown University Hospital. He was a member of the FLEFO forum on CompuServe and will be remembered among translators and interpreters.
(Thanks to Alex for the ghit)