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Man Tweets From Landing Site

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By HOWARD ALTMAN

haltman@tampatrib.com

Published: January 17, 2009

Janis Krums was just trying to catch the last ferry out of Manhattan so he could get to a meeting in New Jersey.

"I jumped aboard, like you see in a movie," says the 23-year-old from Latvia who grew up in Sarasota.

Minutes later, thanks to fate and the power of social networking, Krums would become part of history.

"I sat down and was looking at my phone and passing time and someone said, 'Look, there is a plane in the Hudson,'" he says. "I assumed it was a small plane, like a Cessna. But I looked up and saw it was a huge Airbus."

It was the now-famous U.S. Airways Flight 1549 to be exact, flying out of LaGuardia on a trip to Charlotte, N.C.

Krums, whose start-up business, Elementz Nutrition, provides "all-natural performance-based supplements for elite athletes," says that, living in New York City, his first thought was that terrorists took down the plane.

His next thought was more like, "wow."

"You don't see a plane in the Hudson every day," he says. "I was on my Twitter account as I was looking up."

Twitter is an online social networking site that allows users to instantly communicate where they are, what they are thinking and what they are doing. Users can also share photos and video. Users can sign up to follow the postings of others.

At this point, Krums was looking at people in yellow lifejackets standing on the wing of an airplane that crash landed in the river. The ferry he was on was the first to arrive at the crash scene.

"I have an option where you can press a button for the camera cell phone. I took the picture and quickly posted it."

Then he typed a few words.

"There's a plane in the Hudson," he wrote. "I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people. Crazy."

"After that, it was forgotten," he says.

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