A rescuer pulls what appears to be an emergency door chute from the inlet. (Newsday / Dick Kraus)

For more than a day, the world has seen dramatic television footage live from Moriches Inlet, but amid the floating debris and personal items there have been no images of the worst of the crash: the bodies.

WNBC News Director Paula Walker told the pilots of Chopper4, whose state-of-the-art cameras provided the most gripping images of the fiery wreckage on Wednesday, not to zoom in on any of the human remains floating in the ocean.

"I told them, 'Don't go too close,"' said Walker, who described the images as "very sad and disturbing." She also put out an electronic message to all her producers instructing them not to broadcast any pictures of bodies. "We don't need to show everything we've got to tell the story," said Walker.

Both WNBC Channel 4 and Cablevision's News12 also had footage from staff members who had joined the flotilla of private rescue boats in the dark hours after the crash.

"Our cameraman shot 40 minutes of video, but only four minutes made it on the air," said Janet Alshouse, assistant news director of News12. "It was very gruesome and disturbing; there was no purpose to airing it," she said.

The frantic rescue effort and its location also turned some reporters into participants. WNBC's crime reporter John Miller had taken a day off when he was paged by his office. He rushed to his 24-foot Boston Whaler at a marina on Shinnecock Inlet, but realized he was still a novice at navigation. Just then, Tony Villareale, the owner of Hampton Watercraft and Marine, arrived in response to a Coast Guard call for private rescue craft and joined him. Miller also took his home video camera along.

"I got a couple of shots of other boats spotting bodies and pulling them in," said Miller, who was also filing live audio reports to Chopper4.

But then he also had to put his camera down. "When we spotted bodies, we left to get the county police boat. At another time, we would shine our lights for someone else pulling in bodies."

"It was kind of like wearing three or four hats at once," said Miller, who had also served as New York City deputy police commissioner. "This wasn't my first plane crash or even a plane crash in the water. And I saw a lot of bodies with the police department. But this included some sights that will show up in a couple of nightmares, I am sure. I saw things I never saw before." Little of his graphic video was televised.

Local News12 had the first live report from the scene Wednesday when it went on at 10:15 from inside the gates of the Coast Guard station. "When we first heard of a plane crash, we sent a truck immediately. They called us and said it is a very, very, very big plane," Alshouse said as she described the beginning of News12's live coverage throughout the night with reports from the scene. Most of the New York City-based stations stopped their live reports during Thursday's early morning hours.

And city stations' recent practice of basing reporters and crews on Long Island also paid off with fast, aggressive coverage.

WABC Channel 7 reporter N.J. Burkett and a news van pulled into the Air National Guard headquarters at Gabreski Airport. "It was literally two minutes to eleven," he said. "I climbed up on top of the truck and went live."

During one of his live broadcasts, the crews of a National Guard C-130 plane and helicopter who had been practicing a routine night refueling landed. The pilots turned out to be witnesses to the explosion and told of the fireball and swooping down to 100 feet to see clusters of bodies in the water and no signs of life.

"It was the first actual description of what it was like out there," said Burkett. "They described the bodies in the water."